Joseph Brodsky translating Joseph Brodsky. Towards a New Theory

‘Post-horse of Civilisation’:

Joseph Brodsky translating Joseph Brodsky.

Towards a New Theory of Russian-English Poetry

Translation

Dissertation

zur Erlangung der Doktorwürde

am Fachbereich Philosophie und Geisteswissenschaften,

Institut für Englische Philologie

der Freien Universität Berlin

vorgelegt von

Zakhar Ishov, MA (FU Berlin)

Berlin, am Juni 30, 2008

ii

Gutachter

1. Gutachter Prof. Dr. Dr. Russell West-Pavlov

2. Gutachter Prof. Dr. Georg Witte

Die Disputation im Fach Englische Philologie wurde am 21.08.2008 abgelegt und das

Promotionsverfahren mit der Gesamtnote ‘summa cum laude’ bestanden.

iii

Table of contents

GUTACHTER ........................................................................................................................................ II

TABLE OF CONTENTS ..................................................................................................................... III

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................ VII

PREFACE ..............................................................................................................................................XI

NOTE...................................................................................................................................................XIII

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 1

THE PHENOMENON OF THE ‘ENGLISH BRODSKY’: AUTHOR & SELF-TRANSLATOR ................................. 3

OUTLINE OF THE THESIS ........................................................................................................................ 6

BREAKDOWN OF THE CHAPTERS ............................................................................................................ 8

CHAPTER 1: CRITICAL DEBATE OVER BRODSKY’S SELF-TRANSLATIONS................... 14

TRANSLATIONS OR ORIGINALS?........................................................................................................... 14

BRODSKY’S CRITICS ............................................................................................................................ 15

BRODSKY’S DEFENDERS ...................................................................................................................... 18

BRODSKY SCHOLARSHIP: TRANSLATIONS AS MERE SHADES OF ORIGINALS.......................................... 20

BRODSKY SCHOLARSHIP: NEED FOR CHANGE ...................................................................................... 24

ENGLISH BRODSKY: A NEW PERSPECTIVE............................................................................................ 26

CHAPTER 2: ARCHIVAL RESEARCH: GATHERING MATERIALS, CATALOGUING,

INTERVIEWS ..................................................................................................................................................... 29

RESEARCH RESULTS ............................................................................................................................ 30

CHAPTER 3: THEORETICAL STANDPOINTS AND HYPOTHESES........................................ 33

BRODSKY AND THE TRADITION OF RUSSIAN POETS-TRANSLATORS ..................................................... 34

Walter Benjamin and his translation theory .................................................................................. 39

CHAPTER 4: THEORETICAL STANDPOINTS AND HYPOTHESES: VIKTOR

ZHIRMUNSKY ................................................................................................................................................... 49

METRE AND RHYTHM .......................................................................................................................... 51

‘METRICAL TASK’: VARIETY OF ELEMENTS OF METRICAL ORGANIZATION. ......................................... 54

‘Simultaneity of assonances’.......................................................................................................... 54

Rhymes........................................................................................................................................... 57

Rhyme: a phenomenon of rhythm................................................................................................... 59

CHAPTER 5: BRODSKY’S BIOGRAPHY – THE ‘TWISTS OF LANGUAGE’.......................... 61

LEARNING ENGLISH ............................................................................................................................ 61

GUESTS FROM THE FUTURE.................................................................................................................. 68

iv

LANGUAGE OF EXILE ........................................................................................................................... 70

EARLY AMERICANA ............................................................................................................................ 71

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING TRANSLATED ........................................................................................... 76

‘JOSEPH BRODSKY: SELECTED POEMS’................................................................................................ 78

TEACHING ENGLISH AND ‘ON RICHARD WILBUR’............................................................................... 85

ART VS. POLITICS: THE AMERICAN LEFT AND FREE VERSE ................................................................. 88

BEYOND CONSOLATION: BRODSKY’S EXPECTATIONS OF TRANSLATION ............................................. 91

FARRAR, STRAUS, AND GIROUX : ‘A PART OF SPEECH’..................................................................... 101

APPENDIX.......................................................................................................................................... 103

CHAPTER 6: ‘A TRANSLATION: WHATEVER MUST BE DONE’ ......................................... 107

WEISSBORT-BRODSKY: RANGING PRACTICES OF TRANSLATION ........................................................ 107

WEISSBORT-BRODSKY: ‘CHINWAG’ OVER TRANSLATION .................................................................. 109

Brodsky’s main arguments........................................................................................................... 120

THE THEORY OF METRE AND RHYME: ANGLO-RUSSIAN SIMILARITIES AND CONTRASTS .................. 121

Russian-English similarities: verse metre as compositional principle ........................................ 121

Metres: Russian-English contrasts .............................................................................................. 124

Rhymes: Russian-English similarities: rhyme as compositional principle .................................. 127

Rhymes: Russian-English contrasts, feminine rhymes ................................................................. 129

SOME OBSERVATIONS ON BRODSKY’S TRANSLATING THEORY IN THE VIEW OF ENGLISH-RUSSIAN

METRICAL CONTRASTS..................................................................................................................................... 132

CHAPTER 7: A SECOND CHRISTMAS BY THE SHORE.......................................................... 136

INTRODUCTION: REAL POETS AND MERE TRANSLATORS.................................................................... 136

“A SECOND CHRISTMAS BY THE SHORE” .......................................................................................... 140

‘A second Christmas’: prosodic scheme ...................................................................................... 142

Stanza I: interlinear translation................................................................................................... 144

Stanza I: Brodsky’s commentaries. .............................................................................................. 146

Stanza I – Kline’s 1st revision ...................................................................................................... 150

Stanza I – definitive version by Brodsky ...................................................................................... 151

Stanza II ....................................................................................................................................... 154

Stanza II: Kline’s first draft ......................................................................................................... 160

Stanza II – Kline’s first revision .................................................................................................. 161

Stanza II: Brodsky........................................................................................................................ 161

Stanza III...................................................................................................................................... 162

Stanza III – Kline’s 1st draft:........................................................................................................ 163

Stanza III: Brodsky ...................................................................................................................... 164

Stanza IV ...................................................................................................................................... 165

Stanza IV: Kline’s 2nd draft .......................................................................................................... 171

CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................... 174

1. Translator’s freedom: content, semantics, tonality.................................................................. 174

2. Rhymes..................................................................................................................................... 175

v

3. Verse metre .............................................................................................................................. 176

4. Stanzaic design ........................................................................................................................ 178

5. ‘Simultaneity of assonances’.................................................................................................... 178

6. Literary allusions ..................................................................................................................... 179

APPENDIX.......................................................................................................................................... 179

Original poem in Russian: ........................................................................................................... 179

CHAPTER 8: ‘FROM NOWHERE WITH LOVE’......................................................................... 181

‘A PART OF SPEECH’: PROSODIC EXPERIMENTS ................................................................................. 181

‘FROM NOWHERE WITH LOVE’: INTERLINEAR TRANSLATION ............................................................. 183

Content......................................................................................................................................... 183

‘From nowhere with love’: metrical structure ............................................................................. 186

VERSE THEORY: A POEM IN DOLNIK ................................................................................................... 187

Brodsky’s metrical innovations: loose dolnik .............................................................................. 189

‘FROM NOWHERE WITH LOVE’: IN SEARCH OF ITS VERSE METRE (ALIAS RHYTHM) ............................ 191

Distribution of vowels and consonants ........................................................................................ 192

Caesuras and enjambments ......................................................................................................... 192

Rhymes as metrical device ........................................................................................................... 193

‘From nowhere with love’: Weissbort’s translation .................................................................... 196

Brodsky’s self-translation based on Weissbort’s translation....................................................... 198

Semantics of rhymes..................................................................................................................... 199

CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................................... 202

APPENDIX.......................................................................................................................................... 203

‚ Ниоткуда с любовью,’ Russian original from ‘Часть Речи’:................................................ 203

CHAPTER 9: THE NORTH BUCKLES METAL........................................................................... 205

VERSE METRE.................................................................................................................................... 205

‘THE NORTH BUCKLES METAL’: MEANING......................................................................................... 206

STANZA I: WEISSBORT’S TRANSLATION ............................................................................................ 211

STANZA I: BRODSKY’S VERSION........................................................................................................ 212

STANZA II: WEISSBORT ..................................................................................................................... 213

STANZA II: BRODSKY ........................................................................................................................ 214

STANZA III: WEISSBORT.................................................................................................................... 215

STANZA III: BRODSKY....................................................................................................................... 216

‘NORTH BUCKLES METAL’: LOST IN TRANSLATION ............................................................................ 217

CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................................... 219

APPENDIX.......................................................................................................................................... 221

Translated by Weissbort: ............................................................................................................. 221

Brodsky 1st revision:.................................................................................................................... 221

Brodsky’s Final version:.............................................................................................................. 221

Original poem in Russian from «Часть Речи»: ......................................................................... 222

vi

CONCLUSIONS.................................................................................................................................. 223

PostScript..................................................................................................................................... 231

BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................... 233

ARCHIVAL RESEARCH MATERIALS ................................................................................................... 233

I. Joseph Brodsky Archives at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University,

New Haven:................................................................................................................................................ 233

II. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux Archives at the Manuscript and Archival Division of the New York

Public Library: .......................................................................................................................................... 233

III. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.: Manuscript and Sound Recordings Divisions:...... 233

PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE .............................................................................................................. 234

MEDIA SOURCES ............................................................................................................................... 235

INTERVIEWS (UNPUBLISHED) ............................................................................................................. 236

PRIMARY AND SECONDARY LITERATURE ........................................................................................... 236

Works by Joseph Brodsky: ........................................................................................................... 236

Works by other authors:............................................................................................................... 238

APPENDIX .......................................................................................................................................... 253

DEUTSCHE ZUSAMMENFASSUNG ....................................................................................................... 253

vii

Acknowledgements

I would like to formally express my gratitude to the Nafög Foundation and the DAAD

Foundation for their generally financial support from March 2004 until March 2006, which

allowed me to conduct research both in Berlin as well as abroad in St. Petersburg, Cambridge

University Library and most importantly at Yale University.

I would also like to thank the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center

whose generosity allowed me to conduct archival research at the Library of Congress in

Washington, D.C from January to February of 2007.

I owe a great personal debt to Brodsky’s translators (and co-translators) George L.

Kline, Peter France and Alan Myers who sent me, in response to my written requests, the first

drafts of their translations of Brodsky’s poems subsequently revised by the author. Back in

Winter 2003 – Spring 2004 those materials were sufficient to allow me to start this project.

I would like to thank Yakov Gordin, a poet and Brodsky’s longstanding friend,

currently the chief editor and the owner of the publishing house Zhurnal Zvezda (the main

publishing house for the critical literature on Brodsky in Russian) for receiving me during my

two research trips to St. Petersburg, in June 2004 and in March 2005. Mr. Gordin gladly

shared his recollections of Brodsky with me and updated me on the most recent publications

on Brodsky in his publishing house.

I would also like to thank Daniel Weissbort who in August 2004 received me in his

house in London, shared his recollections of his collaboration with Brodsky and presented me

with a copy of his freshly-published book From Russian with Love: Joseph Brodsky in

English (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2004).1 My thanks go also to Mr. Weissbort’s wife

Valentina Polukhina, a Brodsky scholar herself, who updated me on the current critical

literature on Brodsky and made me aware of the PhD dissertation of Natalia Rulyova ‘Joseph

Brodsky: Translating Oneself’ (Cambridge, 2002); Polukhina also helped to arrange for me a

meeting with the Lady Natasha Spender, the widow of Stephen Spender.

I would like to express my profound gratitude to Lady Spender for meeting me at her

home in Loudoun Street and for sharing with me her valuable recollections of an encounter

1 Although dealing with the subject of Brodsky’s self-translations, as can be inferred from its title, From Russian with Love: Joseph Brodsky in English is mainly an auto-biographical work rich in personal reminiscences rather than in technical details.

viii

between Brodsky, Auden and Spender. (This already mythical encounter took place in the

very same house during Brodsky’s first days in the West after his expulsion from the USSR.)

She also gave me other important details of the long friendship between her husband Stephen

Spender and Joseph Brodsky.

I would also like to thank Adrian Poole from the Cambridge University Comparative

Literature Department for meeting me at the Cambridge University Library in August 2004

and helping me to obtain access to Rulyova’s dissertation.

Further thanks are due to the widow of Joseph Brodsky, Maria Sozzani, for receiving

me at the publishing house Adelphi in Milan in January 2005 and encouraging me to continue

my PhD project on Brodsky’s self-translations from the perspective of English literature.

Maria Sozzani also shared with me her reminiscences of Brodsky, confirmed the then-

upcoming opening of the Brodsky Estate archives at Yale and gave me her personal approval

as head of the Brodsky Estate to pursue research there.

I would also like to thank the poet Vladimir Ufliand (now deceased), a close friend of

Brodsky, for meeting me in March 2005 in his apartment in St. Petersburg and for sharing

with me his memories of Brodsky.

My special thanks go to Timothy Young, the curator of the Brodsky Archives at

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale for his help in making available the

materials of the Brodsky Estate, where I conducted research from 6th June – 4th November

2005. Similar thanks go to all the front desk stuff of the library for their inestimable assistance

in my dealings with enormous amount of uncatalogued material, consisting of 89 boxes

covering both the Russian and American periods of Brodsky’s life. These materials had not

been previously accessed by any other researcher.

I wish to record here my especial gratitude to the late Alexander Sumerkin, Brodsky’s

friend, Russian secretary and the editor of Brodsky’s last Russian collection of verse Peizazh

S Navodneniyem, whom I met with several times on my week-end trips to New York in the

period between June and November 2005. Mr. Sumerkin kindly introduced me to people and

places related to Brodsky in New York as well as shared with me first hand information about

Brodsky’s life in the city. Mr. Sumerkin’s also told me about his own interesting experience

as Brodsky’s assistant translator.

My separate thanks go to Ann Kjellberg, Brodsky’s literary executor who took an

active part herself in the translations of Brodsky into English for giving me every possible

ix

support with my research at the Brodsky Estate: for providing me with historical and also up-

to-date information about the translations of Brodsky as well as more generally about new

developments in Brodsky criticism. I would like to thank her for meeting me twice in New

York in June and October 2005 and sharing with me her personal experience of Brodsky in

her capacity as his translator-associate. I also wish to thank her for connecting me with so

many other Brodsky associates and Brodsky scholars in America.

I am also very grateful to Edward Mendelson, literary executor of Wystan Hugh

Auden, who had an enormous influence on Joseph Brodsky, for receiving me in October 2005

in Columbia University. Mendelson, who also knew Brodsky, shared with me his impressions

of Brodsky in the latter’s early days in the West.

I would also like to thank Brodsky’s assistant translators and associates Nancy

Meiselas, Barry Rubin and Jamey Gambrell for entering into telephone and electronic

communication to share with me important information with regard to Brodsky’s self-

translating activity.

My thanks go to Prof. Lev Loseff from Dartmouth College, a friend and Brodsky

scholar himself who updated me on the new developments in the critical debate surrounding

Brodsky’s translations into English in December 2006 in Philadelphia.

I would further like to express my gratitude to the Librarian of Congress Professor

James Billington, a promoter of Brodsky’s English poetry ultimately responsible for

Brodsky’s appointment as the Poet Laureate in 1991, for giving me an appointment in his

office in January 2007. James Billington also kindly assented to giving me an interview about

Brodsky’s translations and English verse.

Research for this doctoral dissertation was conducted at the Library of Congress and

was facilitated by the staff of the European Reading Room, Manuscript and Sound Divisions.

My particular thanks go to Harald Leich and Alice Birney.

My separate thanks go to Professor George L. Kline, Brodsky’s co-translator and close

associate, for giving me a warm welcome in his house in South Carolina on 26-27 January

2007 as well as for sharing important materials with me from his personal archive pertaining

to his three-decade-long translating collaboration with Brodsky.

I would also like to thank Barry Rubin, Brodsky’s long-standing friend, translator and

associate, for meeting with me on 7 February 2007 in New York and giving me his private

x

audio recordings of Brodsky’s readings as well as sharing with me important reminiscences

about their joint translating collaboration.

I must also thank Derek Walcott, Brodsky’s friend, translating collaborator and a

Nobel Prize winning English language poet, for agreeing to an extensive interview in October

2007 at Yale dealing with the central questions of the present dissertation.

My similar thanks go to Richard Wilbur who agreed to answer my questions regarding

Brodsky’s poetry in English on 1 December 2007 at Yale.

My particular gratitude is directed at Professor Alexander Dolinin from University of

Wisconsin-Madison as well as at Professor Tomas Venclova from Yale University for reading

parts of the present thesis and supplying me with some useful comments and suggestions.

My enormous gratitude to my official supervisor Russell West-Pavlov for his

inestimable inspiration and encouragement throughout this project, for his generous and

competent editorial assistance, and inestimable coaching especially during the final stages of

the project. Without whose academic guidance and expertise I doubt I would have brought my

thesis to completion.

I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Alexey Bragin, a friend, poetry

aficionado and Brodsky expert – the person who some eleven years ago introduced me for the

first time to Brodsky’s verse – for his suggestions and critical comments, for his spiritual

guidance, poetic expertise and support in the capacity of my second, albeit officially

unacknowledged, ‘Doktorvater.’

I would also like to express my deep gratitude to Professor Wilhelm Gauger for his

initial academic blessing in ‘passing’ me onto my current Doktorvater West-Pavlov shortly

before his retirement and his unwavering intellectual support ever since.

I would like to separately thank Britta Hammer and Olga Radetzkaja for their help in a

very important activity, as every academic writer knows, that of grant application preparation.

I am especially indebted to English native speakers Greg Kristy, Kenton Turk, Kerry

Philben, Alec Brookes, Marissa Grunes, David Willey, Steve Ramos and Emil Niculescu for

their patient revisions and English-language expertise.

Any emissions or errors remain of course the sole responsibility of the author.

xi

Preface

…to me … who was born and bred a British Pharisee, Russians are not quite like other folk. If their respective literatures in the nineteenth century are a guide, no two sensibilities could be more poles apart than the Russian and the British. (W.H. Auden)2

When many years ago as a Russian student of English I set out on a tricky quest of

conquering another linguistic system and getting my grip on the Anglo-Saxon culture –

apparently the extreme opposite to the one which I had naturally inherited – I chose Nabokov

to be my cicerone. Later I discovered that I had considerably complicated my task – Orwell or

Jane Austen would have constituted a much smoother beginning for a learner of the language

– Nabokov with his opulent vocabulary, very challenging even for the most native of

speakers. Yet the comfort which I derived back then from my choice of having this writer as

the main course in my reading diet was of a more psychological nature: if my compatriot

could make it, I thought, then the prospects of my cultural ‘Polar conquest’ could not be all

that hopeless either.

If anything was to be learnt from Nabokov, who had very strong opinions about

everything, translation included, it was the discipline of always attempting to read texts of

non-Russian prose in the original.

It is therefore not surprising that when later I became deeply interested in poetry it was

Brodsky, yet another countryman from my native city, who was to become my Virgil.

Brodsky’s brilliant essays in English opened up a whole universe for me. Mandelstam and

Auden, Cavafis and Montale, Ovid and Frost, Miłosz and Dante cohabited then on equal

footing: all of them being loved, quoted, internalized, and memorized by heart. Above all

Brodsky taught me that poetry, usually deemed a closed area for non natives, can, or rather

ought to, be accessed by them, if they subscribe to his favourite concept of world culture.

Under Brodsky’s guidance I have learnt to know and love the works of such different English

language poets as Donne, Marvell, Herbert, Lewis Carroll, Frost, Eliot, Auden, Spender and

Betjeman.

2 Wystan Hugh Auden,. Forewords & Afterwords (Random House: New York, 1973) p. 275.

xii

Then there came a day when out of curiosity I decided to have a look at Brodsky’s

self-translations into English. My first reaction was one of rejection: they did not look, I

thought, even remotely like the originals. Then, prompted by reflection that a perfect

translation of poetry is actually a priori an impossible task – what it can aspire to achieve is at

best a well-balanced sacrifice, as also suggested in Walter Benjamin’s famous essay ‘The

Task of the Translator’3 – I started to look at them closer.

I imagined the fortitude of the poet-translator, who being the author himself, was

surely the first to be aware of the great gulf separating these translations from the originals,

and yet had nevertheless, accepted one by one certain translations to stand for them. This

vision filled me with thrill. Dealing with translations has changed my whole perception of the

originals: I have since become much more aware of the net weight of the various elements

which make up a single poem. Brodsky’s original poems in English were the next discovery

in store.

To follow a genius penetrating into the vast forbidding grounds of a foreign idiom, to

watch him trespass upon territories ‘where executives would never want to tamper,’4 has since

become for me a most absorbing of occupations.

The present doctoral thesis is an attempt to share with the reader my enthusiasm for

this extraordinary phenomenon of poetry self-translation into English by a famous Russian

poet – a phenomenon which for all its merits and drawbacks brings the Russian and English

languages closer together.

3 ‚…das Verhältnis des Gehalts zur Sprache [ist] völlig verschieden […] in Original und Übersetzung. Bilden nämlich diese im ersten eine gewisse Einheit wie Frucht und Schale, so umgibt die Sprache der Übersetzung ihren Gehalt wie ein Königsmantel in weiten Falten.’ Quoted in Walter Benjamin. ‚Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’, Gesammelte Scriften, IV i, Tillman Rexroth (Hrg.) (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981) p. 15. 4 From Wystan Hugh Auden. ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’, Selected Poems: new edition. E. Mendelson (ed.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 80.

xiii

Note

In the present thesis I use two scripts: Latin and Cyrillic. This being a thesis in English

literature, it has been of primary consideration for me to fulfil the requirements of an English-

language scholarly publication. Therefore I use the Latin script and the Library of Congress

transliteration system for Brodsky’s original poems in Russian, Russian personal and

geographical names, the titles of Russian articles, journals, books, and other publications in

the main body of the text, in the footnotes and in the bibliography. At the end of each chapter

which analyses Brodsky’s poems I reproduce his originals in Cyrillic, for those of my readers

who read Russian.

Whenever the original quotations were in Russian or Italian, I have reproduced them

in the footnotes in the original using either the Cyrillic or Latin script respectively. In the

main body of the text I offer my own translations, except where published versions were

available.

Throughout the thesis there can be found two different spellings of the names Viktor

Zirmunskij (or Viktor Zhirmunsky) and Jurij Lotman (or Iuri Lotman). The first spelling

corresponds to the one used in the quoted source. The latter is the Latin transliteration of the

original name of the respective authors, according to the LOC transliteration system.

Throughout this work I have quoted from two similarly named books – Zirmunskij,

Viktor. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. transl. C.F. Brown. (The Hague:

Mouton&Co., 1966) and Zhirmunsky, Viktor. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory] (Leningrad:

Sovetsky Pisatel’, 1975). Although there is some overlap between these two books they are

not identical. The English language version includes only one work of Zhirmunsky, whereas

the Russian one includes three books under the same title Teoria Stikha.

Oft-quoted sources are given at first in full in the footnotes, but are presented later on

in an abbreviated form.

1

Introduction

‘Poetry is what gets lost in translation.’ (Robert Frost)

‘Square the circle, in short.’ ‘An Admonition’, Joseph Brodsky

The subject of the present thesis is Joseph Brodsky’s self-translations of his own

poetry from Russian into English. The fact that Brodsky was translating from his mother

tongue into his second language already makes his a very special case. Of course, there are

other cases of writers composing excellently in their second language and translating their

own works into that language, writers such as Nabokov or Beckett. Such authors have

familiarized us with the idea that the phenomenon of a bilingual writer is after all possible.

The difference with Brodsky lies, however, in that both Beckett and Nabokov were mainly

prose writers. (Despite the fact, that Beckett wrote poetry in French and that Nabokov

believed till the end that he was a poet too). For a poet to breach the linguistic gap is a much

more formidable achievement. When it comes to translation the choice between prose and

poetry makes all the difference, for in no other art form is the unity of form and content more

evident than in poetry. In the words of Auden:

The formal structure of the poem is not something distinct from its meaning but as intimately bound up with the latter as the body is with the soul.5

This special unity is best manifested in the impossibility of its preservation in translation. This

is, echoed in Brodsky’s review of Mandelstam’s translations into English:

A poem is a result of a certain necessity: it is inevitable, so is its form. …. Form too is noble…. It is the vessel in which meaning is cast; they sanctify each other reciprocally – it is an association of soul and body. Break the vessel, and the liquid will leak out.6

Thus an appreciation of a poet in a different language is much rarer and more problematic

than an appreciation of a prose writer. The reputation of a poet in his country of origin more

than often fails to cross borders. By this token, Brodsky was disappointed when Auden told

him he could not understand why Mandelstam was a great poet – “The translations I have

5 Wystan Hugh Auden. ‘Note’, W.H. Auden reading his poetry. [Nonmusic sound recording] (London: Harper Collins Audio Publishers, 1955). 6 Joseph Brodsky. ‘The Child of Civilization’, Less than one: essays, (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 1996) p. 141.

2

seen … don’t convince me of it”7. The same idea of untranslatability of some of the greatest

poetry is echoed by Hannah Arendt; here she refers to Auden’s poems:

…much of his work, in utter simplicity, arose out of the spoken word, out of idioms of everyday language – like “Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my Faithless arm.” This kind of perfection is very rare; we find it in some of the greatest of Goethe’s poems, and it must exist in most of Pushkin’s works, because their hallmark is that they are untranslatable. The moment poems of this kind are wrenched from their original abode, they disappear in the cloud of banality. … The very untranslatability of one of Auden’s poems is what, many years ago, convinced me of his greatness. Three German translators had tried their luck and killed mercilessly one of my favourite poems, “If I Could Tell You”…8 (Italics mine, Z.I.).

That is why the translation of poetry has produced so many skeptics, who have

doubted its possibility in principle. The first of them was Dante who stated in his ‘Convivio’:

…everybody has to know that no thing which has been harmonized according [to the rules of] a musical connection can be rendered from one’s own language into another without breaking all of its sweetness and harmony. 9 (transl. Z.I.)

Despite the above quote, which might make any translation look like a prodigiously

futile task, poetry has always been and still is translated from one language into another.

Moreover, the translation of poetry is justly considered to be a unique and important source of

cross-cultural influence, a ‘vehicle of civilisation’. Pushkin called translators ‘post-horses of

civilisation’10 and, once again, Brodsky observes:

Civilization is the sum total of different cultures animated by a common spiritual numerator, and its main vehicle – speaking both metaphorically and literally – is translation. The wandering of a Greek portico into the latitude of tundra is a translation. 11

One does not have to grope for examples to illustrate this culture-spreading aspect of

poetic translation. It will suffice to recall that the history of the whole of Latin poetry began in

240 BC when Lucius Livius Andronicus produced a translation of a Greek drama, which then

became the first formal play for the then comparatively uncultured Romans. The translator is

to this day regarded as the father of Roman drama and epic poetry.

7 Ibid., p. 139. 8 Hannah Arendt, “Remembering Wystan H. Auden, Who Died in the Night of the Twenty-Eighth of September, (Auden, W.H. 1907-1973). The Harvard Advocate. Vol. CVIII, Numbers 2 and 3. A special Auden double-number, (Cambridge (MA): Harvard Advocate, [1975]), p. 42. 9 Original quote: ‘E però sappia ciascuno che nulla cosa per legame musaico armonizzata si può de la sua loquela in altra transmutare sanza rompere tutta sua dolcezza e armonia.’. Quoted in Dante Allighieri. ‚Il Convivio’, Le Opere di Dante. (Firenze: Nella Sede Della Società, 1960) p. 155. 10 Quoted in Joseph Brodsky, “On Richard Wilbur: review”, The American Poetry Review, 2:1, (Jan/Feb 1973) p 11 Brodsky. ‘The Child of Civilization’, Less Than One, p. 139.

3

By this token the translation of poetry seems to be forever encircled by a paradox,

which W.H. Auden thus encapsulated it in his foreword to the English edition of translations

of the Greek poet, Constantine Cavafy:

Ever since I was first introduced to his poetry … over thirty years ago, C.P. Cavafy has remained an influence on my own writing; that is to say, I can think of poems which, if Cavafy were unknown to me, I should have written quite differently or perhaps not written at all. Yet I do not know a word of Modern Greek, so that my only access to Cavafy’s poetry has been through English and French translations.

This perplexes and a little disturbs me. Like everybody else, I think, who writes poetry, I have always believed the essential difference between prose and poetry to be that prose can be translated into another tongue but poetry cannot. 12

The excessive difficulty of the task in combination with the task’s great importance

puts a translator of poetry into the position of a quest hero. Among all such quest heroes in the

long history of the translation of poetry in English, there was no other poet who dedicated

himself with a greater devotion than Joseph Brodsky. He approached his translation with a

fervour verging on the quixotic, squaring the circle of poetic translation, defying the spell of

impossibility and bridging single-handedly the linguistic gap with great energy. It might be

argued that no one’s efforts seem to have produced greater controversy in the English

speaking world either.

The phenomenon of the ‘English Brodsky’: author & self-translator

If it is true, as Brodsky believed, that the durability of the poet’s afterlife is secured by

the longevity of the language itself in which the poet writes, then, one might say, Joseph

Brodsky secured himself twice as long an afterlife by having written both in Russian and

English. For, as suggested by his former assistant and now literary executor, Ann Kjellberg,

Brodsky, a distinguished poet and writer in his mother tongue of Russian, nonetheless

managed to leave through his translations and original compositions in English an important

trace in his adoptive language as well:

At the time of his death in 1996 Brodsky was recognized as one of the great poets of his mother tongue; yet after twenty-four years in the United States, and decades of teaching and studying poetry in English, he had become a master of his adoptive

12 W. H. Auden. Forewords & Afterwords (Random House: New York, 1973) p. 333.

4

language as well. The poems collected here … are the voice of a citizen of the world, exploring the territories of language itself.13

These words of Kjellberg open an over five-hundred-page-long volume Joseph

Brodsky: Collected Poems in English published in 2001 in New York by Farrar, Straus &

Giroux. ‘The title of this hefty book,’ as one of Brodsky’s co-translators Weissbort observes,

‘is challenging, rather than … simply factual.’14 Weissbort disputed the factual character of

the title, as he was aware that his own contribution as a co-translator, and that of others, was

elided by the title. Furthermore, he questioned the genuinely English nature of the poems.

Indeed, neither the place of Brodsky’s birth St. Petersburg (or Leningrad as it was

known in Stalinist Russia) nor its timing (1940) could have presupposed the emergence of the

English poet Brodsky. And yet, the volume consists predominantly of translations from

Russian made by the author himself, or in collaboration with different translators; there are

also about fifty poems written by Brodsky in English directly as well as some of Brodsky’s

translations into English of poems by other Russian and Polish poets.

Brodsky had very idiosyncratic ideas about translation – or at least they appeared

idiosyncratic in the English-speaking world, where translating formal poetry into unrhymed

free verse has long been a standardized approach. Brodsky, on the other hand, insisted

strongly on a mimetic translation, i.e. a translation which would retain a poem’s verse

structure – especially its rhymes, verse metre, rhyme patterns and stanzaic design should be

preserved above all. And yet, as Walter Benjamin has suggested, such a translating strategy

renders the translator’s task enormously more difficult. 15

Soon after Brodsky’s expulsion in 1972 from the Soviet Union and his settling in the

USA, the translation of his own verse into English became a matter of Brodsky’s professional

career as an American poet. Supervising the translations of his verse from Russian into

English done by other translators, Brodsky set out to adjust the translations in line with his

idea that above all the metrical structure of the originals should be preserved in translation.

This practice of authorial revision was not received with enthusiasm by many of his co-

translators and met with harsh attacks from critics, many of whom claimed that in reworking

13 Joseph Brodsky, So Forth, (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 1996), dust-jacket. 14 Daniel Weissbort. ‚Something like his own language’ (review). (March 2003) URL http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr14/reviews/weissbort.html (accessed on 18 June 2007) p. 1. 15 ‘Wie sehr endlich Treue in der Wiedergabe der Form die des Sinnes erschwert, versteht sich von selbst.’ Walter Benjamin. ‚Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’, p. 18.

5

translations by others Brodsky overstepped the rules of English grammar and prosody and that

his self-translations did not sound idiomatically or metrically correct in English.

Brodsky’s collaborative translators often found it difficult to meet his translation

requirements, both because of the different trends in English and Russian poetic traditions as

well as because of the wide differences between Russian and English grammatical structures –

some of which Brodsky himself described in an interview:

It’s easier to translate from English into Russian than the reverse. It’s just simpler. If only because grammatically Russian is much more flexible. In Russian you can always make up for what’s been omitted, say just about anything you like. Its power is in its subordinate clauses, in all those participial phrases and other grammatical turns of speech that the devil himself could break his leg on. All of this simply does not exist in English. In English translation, preserving this charm is, well, if not impossible, then at least incredibly difficult. So much is lost. 16

In the above quote Brodsky is referring to the main grammatical contrasts between

English and Russian, which have repercussions for the practice of the verse of poetry between

these languages. Russian is a highly inflected polysyllabic language with an abundance of

subordinate clauses. English is monosyllabic with hard and fast word order and simplified

inflection and a dearth of subordinate clauses. This makes the task before a translator almost

impossible, if it should be reconciled with Brodsky’s principle of mimetic translation. This

well-nigh impossibility was admitted by Brodsky himself:

Translation from Russian into English is one of the most horrendous mindbenders. There aren’t all that many minds equal to this. Even a good, talented, brilliant poet who intuitively understands the task is incapable of restoring a Russian poem in English. The English language simply doesn’t have those moves. The translator is tied grammatically, structurally.17

And yet despite this admission that the task of even an ideal mimetic translator was

likely to be doomed by the existence of enormous hurdles on the path of Russian-English

translation, Brodsky ‘insisted religiously on retention of the form (rhyme and especially the

metre).’18 In fact already at the time of the preparation of A Part of Speech (1975-1980), the

first collection of his English translations brought about under his supervision, Brodsky set

out to redo the translations completed by others applying ‘the dictates of his own … ear,’19 in

16 Solomon Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, (New York: The Free Press, 1998) p. 86. 17 Ibid., p. 86. 18 Daniel Weissbort. ‚Something like his own language’ (review). (March 2003) URL http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr14/reviews/weissbort.html (accessed on 18 June 2007). 19 Ann Kjellberg. ‘Editor’s Note’ to Joseph Brodsky, So Forth, (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 1996) p. xiv.

6

bringing them as he believed ‘closer to the original’20. Brodsky admitted, however, that this

was perhaps done ‘at the expense of their smoothness.’21

Such a practice of revision by the author naturally led to conflicts with translators. As

early as 1979 Brodsky was inclining more and more towards the idea of becoming his own

self-translator:

My main argument with translators is that I care for accuracy and they’re very often inaccurate - which is perfectly understandable. It’s awfully hard to get these people to render the accuracy as you would want them to. So rather than brooding about it, I thought perhaps I would try to do it myself.22

In So Forth (1996) – Brodsky’s last collection of verse in English, published

posthumously – this shift in his translation practices seemed to be definite: of the forty

translations of the collection thirty-two were made by Brodsky himself and only eight in

collaboration with other translators; one third of the poems were composed directly in

English.

Outline of the thesis

In the present thesis I will investigate Brodsky’s translation methods with the intention

of assigning them a place within both English literature as well as within the practice of poetic

translation into the English language. There is a relative paucity of research dedicated to

Brodsky’s self-translation. What little has been written on this topic, especially in the decade

following Brodsky’s untimely death in 1996, tends to repeat a few tired platitudes on both

sides of a polarized and static debate. Clearly there is a need for a change in the critical

approach to the field of Brodsky’s self-translations. For the first time in the history of this

field, this thesis dedicates to some of these translations a detailed textual analysis, with the

aim of establishing Brodsky’s exact translational procedures, and of assessing their success or

otherwise within the context of practices of English poetry translation. The inquiry has been

immensely enriched by the very recent availability of research materials of the Joseph

Brodsky Estate at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale since 2005. These

20 Quoted in: Joseph Brodsky, Collected poems in English, 1972-1996; Ann Kjellberg (ed.). (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 2000) p. 507. 21 Idem. 22 Birkerts, Sven. ‘The Art of Poetry XXVIII: Joseph Brodsky: Interview’, Paris Review 24, (Spring 1982) pp. 82-126. Quoted in: Joseph Brodsky. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations. Ed. Cynthia Haven, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002) pp. 73-74.

7

fascinating and wide-ranging materials, previously inaccessible to researchers, constitute the

principal archival base for the present PhD project.

In light of Brodsky’s insistence on form in poetic translation, a thorough theoretical

background in verse theory would seem to be indispensable for this investigation. Because the

idea of mimetic translation has long been considered outdated in the English literary circles,

the choice of a theorist naturally led back to Russia. There, in part because of the different

trends in Russian poetry, metrical studies flourished in the twentieth century. Viktor

Zhirmunsky’s Verse Theory, largely due to its comparative approach, provides the necessary

theoretical background in terms of both metrical theory as well as the theory of formal

translation of poetry.

Relying on my detailed analysis of previously undiscovered translation materials, I

will try to demonstrate that the introduction of ‘un-English’ elements was not the only

consequence of Brodsky’s reworkings of translations of his poems done by other co-

translators. I will attempt to show that Brodsky based his self-translating practices on

compositional principles partly alien to the context of the English poetic tradition. One

example of this is his insistence on preserving feminine rhymes in English, a quite common

practice in Russian, but also one which strikes the English ear as comical or unserious.

Nonetheless his experiments in self-translation are by no means failures.

My hypothesis is that Brodsky achieved in his translated versions alliterations,

assonances and consonance that function in their own right. Another hypothesis is that in his

self-translations in English Brodsky reinvented metaphors, similes and puns, so that the

translations fall into the category of authentic and independent texts in the realm of English

verse. The bond between the form and content in them is as inseparable here as it is in

Brodsky’s Russian originals. The effect of the rhymes Brodsky finds in English is comparable

to those he had created in his originals. I will try to demonstrate that these rhymes, quite

possibly the main mechanism of his verse composition, were not only often more exact than

those proposed by his co-translators, but also displayed metaphysical wit and often worked as

independent puns in English.

As I will also try to show on the basis of a minute textual analysis of various drafts of

his translations, there was another important consequence of Brodsky’s reworkings of the

translations: namely that they became considerably more faithful to the originals in terms of

their content and conveyed more faithfully the shades of various meanings (metaphorical vs.

literal), tonalities, and various registers of speech. Moreover, as an author and translator in

8

one person, Brodsky possessed a unique freedom to undertake changes to his own original

metaphors, images, similes and puns.

All these properties of Brodsky’s involvement in his self-translations contributed to

the emergence of independent artefacts in English, despite the presence of some foreignising

characteristics.

Breakdown of the chapters

Chapter One will offer an introduction to the critical debate which has taken place in

the past decade in the field of English literary criticism on the subject of Brodsky’s self-

translations. I will attempt to show that during this period ‘trading of opinions’ – in other

words the exchange of two polarised and almost formulaic standpoints and perspectives – has

become the main path of scholars and critics in the field of Brodsky studies. One party

charges Brodsky with ‘un-Englishness’; the other tries to legitimise Brodsky’s English poems

by referring them back to their Russian originals. I will also describe the deadlock of critical

thought into which this trading of opinions has led scholars and critics. Subsequently, I will

propose a new approach to the subject: an attempt to show with reference to concrete

examples the single phases of Brodsky’s transmutations of translations of others as well as the

experiments of his own self-translations. Such an attempt consists of revealing in detail the

logic of the author-translator when prompted by a certain translational decision. I also

mention the use I make in the course of this detailed investigation of the new, previously

inaccessible, archival materials.

In Chapter Two I list the new materials used in the present thesis, which go well

beyond the existing critical literature on the subject of Brodsky’s self-translations. I will also

specifically list the categories of the accessed material as well as suggest new results, which

may be attained thanks to the new availability of these materials.

In Chapter Three I will endeavour to show two main trends in the theory of translation,

i.e. that of literal and adaptive (or mimetic) translation. After a brief introduction to the

history of poetic translation in Russia I will show that the practice of poetic translation first

evolved in Russia in the XVIII c. under strong influence of French classicism and its

principles of ‘embellishing’ translation. Already by the first decades of the XIX c., not

without the influence of German Romantic theorists of translation, the practice of

embellishing translation was superseded by the mimetic translation. The technique of mimetic

9

translation, first fully practiced and perfected by Pushkin, has been the mainstream technique

of poetic translation into Russian to the present day. Mimetic translation presupposes attempts

by the translator to find precise metrical and stylistic equivalents of the foreign original in the

target language, both on the level of form and content. In his translations of foreign poets into

Russian Brodsky was demonstrably a talented pupil of this school of poetic translation.

Further I will present the other theoretic extreme in the domain of poetry translation –

namely that of literal translation with Walter Benjamin as one of its most vocal proponents.

Some parts of the chapter will be dedicated to presentation of Benjamin’s translation theory.

Benjamin linked the project of literalness of poetry translation to the idea of foreignisation of

the target language. Through translation the translator was supposed to widen the boundaries

of the target language through a faithful tribute to the foreign sensibility as well as the

authorial artistic intention, entailed in the foreign original. In the light of the both contrasting

translation theories I will propose my hypothesis. In my view, Brodsky was clearly an

apologist of a mimetic method both in his practice of translation into Russian as well as in his

pronouncements on theory of Russian-English poetic translation. When it came to his self-

translations into English, however, Brodsky persistently introduced foreignising elements,

which were supposed to reflect the author’s sensibility as well as his original artistic intention.

Thus a seemingly ‘mimetic’ Brodsky in his English reincarnation strongly leaned towards the

foreignisation of a translation, typical of literalistic translating approach.

In Chapter Four I will describe the central theoretical standpoints and hypotheses of

this thesis. Brodsky, as has been said already, believed that the form should be retained in

translation. In the view of this translational conception, a thorough study of Anglo-Russian

metrical contrasts seems obligatory. In this chapter I will describe the theoretical contrasts

between English and Russian metrical systems and usages as they were represented in the

metrical theory of translation of Viktor Zhirmunsky. I will also outline the repercussions of

these theoretical findings for a new assessment of Brodsky’s self-translational experiments.

In order to explain Brodsky’s significant place in English literature, and thus the

relevance to English literature of the self-translations of a Russian poet, I present in Chapter

Five an outline of Brodsky’s biography. I will concentrate my attempts on reconstructing

Brodsky’s relationship with English: the history of his acquisition of the language in its

various stages. I will further endeavour to show the growing importance of English translation

of his verse with the general growth of his renown in the world of American and English

10

letters and how the translations of his original verse into English became vitally important for

Brodsky’s career in America.

Towards the end of Chapter Five I will give a short introduction to the history of A

Part of Speech, the first collection of Brodsky’s verse in English assembled with the author’s

active involvement. (The reconstruction of the history of A Part of Speech was based on

research at the Farrar, Strauss and Giroux archives at the New York Public Library). I will

attempt to demonstrate that Brodsky was virtually the curator of the collection. He found and

commissioned the translators himself, provided them with interlinear versions, and oversaw

their work. This managerial aspect of Brodsky in A Part of Speech, which has been

overlooked by previous scholars, rebuts the attacks of those critics who have rebuked Brodsky

for his ‘interference’ into the translation process of his verse into English.

At the same time I will mention some conflicts between Brodsky and his translators –

conflicts which were indicative of both the difficulties on the part of the co-translators in

accepting his changes to their translation drafts as well as of the struggle on the part of the

poet involved in the re-embodiment of his work, to accept every single line of it in translation.

As it is not possible to deal with all the translations and related materials, I have

limited myself to the analysis of the materials pertaining to the collection A Part of Speech –

whose preparation took Brodsky roughly five years from 1975 till 1980. It is in these

materials – correspondence with co-translators, translation drafts, Brodsky’s corrections and

commentaries – rather than in the materials related to the two later English collections of his

poems To Urania and So Forth, collections in which Brodsky made a definitive passage

towards self-translation as opposed to co-operative translations that Brodsky’s general

translation approach as well as the logic behind his specific decisions becomes most apparent.

Chapter Six will be dedicated to prosodic theory. I will also introduce some extracts

from the impassioned correspondence between Brodsky and Weissbort on the translations

from A Part of Speech and will analyse the respective arguments of the poet and his translator.

Further, I place the arguments of both parties in the context of both translation theory and

metrical theory.

Chapter Seven offers a detailed textual analysis of the translation materials pertaining

to the translation of the poem ‘A second Christmas by the shore’, which Brodsky completed

in collaboration with George L. Kline. I open the textual part of the thesis with the analysis of

this poem for two reasons: first, it is one of the last poems Brodsky wrote in strict metre, and

second, because of Kline’s adherence to the principle of the mimetic translation. The analysis

11

of this poem reveals a startling discovery, namely, that Brodsky was far more concerned with

preserving the poem’s rhythm, than with preserving its metre.

The analysis will be also used as a point of departure to show the instances where it

was possible to trace the interrelatedness between form and content in the original poems.

This in turn serves to demonstrate the specific difficulties in translating Brodsky.

Chapter Eight will deal with Brodsky’s translation (made in collaboration with

Weissbort) of the poem of the poem ‘From nowhere with love’ from the cycle “Chast’ Rechi”

(‘A Part of Speech’). This cycle represented a new point of departure in terms of Brodsky’s

formal style. In it Brodsky made a transition to composition almost exclusively in dolniks, or

accentual verse. After ‘A Part of Speech’ Brodsky would resort to classical syllabo-tonic

metres only occasionally. The specificity of this verse metre complicated even further

Brodsky’s mutual understanding with his translators. In this chapter I will attempt to illustrate

the reasons why this occurred, making again a recourse to Zhirmunsky’s prosodic theory. The

chapter will also touch upon some new topics and semantic aspects in Brodsky’s poetic

production following his expulsion from Russian and the way these aspects were rendered

across translation.

Chapter Nine is dedicated to the discussion of the poem ‘North buckles metal’

translated by Weissbort and revised by the author. The particular interest of this poem lies in

the fact that it touches upon the issue of Brodsky’s forced confinement to the Arctic Circle

during his life in the Soviet Union. His trial and confinement largely contributed to Brodsky’s

fame in the West; at the same time the inevitable consequence of this political notoriety was

that less attention was paid to his art. Brodsky was opposed to this situation. The analysis of

the translation drafts of this poem by the British poet and translator Weissbort as well as the

subsequent revisions by Brodsky showed that translating poems, whose content both had

strong imprint of the author’s personal experience and reflected some Soviet realities which

had no equivalent in the Western world, Brodsky’s involvement proved invaluable in

restoring right tonalities and interplays of style and registers. Brodsky’s involvement in the

translation of the poem resulted yet again in achieving an unbreakable bond between the form

and content: the simultaneity of assonances and strong rhymes. And this happened despite the

fact that Brodsky uses metrical devices partly alien to English current usage. The chapter will

also touch upon some interesting interpretational nuances of the poem, which have emerged

in the course of the analysis of the translation drafts. This latter development echoes the

12

suggestion of Andreas Huyssen about the close connection between translation and

interpretation.23

Chapter Ten will present my conclusions. Despite Brodsky’s famous practice of

mimetic translation into Russian (while still in the USSR) and his subsequent support of its

use into English, it is clear that Brodsky’s actual practice of self-translation into English does

not entirely match these principles. This practice represented a symbiosis of the mimetic and

foreignising approaches. On the one hand, instead of trying to find equivalents of his original

verse metres in English, Brodsky in fact often attempts to reproduce their rhythmical

structure, which is based on principles alien to English phonetics and prosody. Brodsky’s

continuous use of strong feminine rhymes in English translation contributes to the same effect

of foreignisation. On the other hand, in his revisions of translations done by others, Brodsky

constantly produced examples of euphonic-semantic unity in English, which works

independently from the respective unity of his originals. Although partly based upon ‘un-

English’ compositional principles these self-translations are comparable to the originals

precisely, because of the presence in them of these authentic bonds between form and content.

Brodsky’s co-translating native speakers often came up with ‘smoother’ translations, i.e.

translations which sounded as if they were written in English. Revising these translations in

his determined refusal to accept ‘smoothness’ Brodsky succeeded in preserving in those

reworked translations the presence of his unique artistic persona. His rhymes in English are

infused with his metaphysical wit and often revealing of his eccentricity and wide knowledge.

Despite the fact that alongside the authentic unity between their form and meaning, the

end-results of Brodsky’s revisions and self-translations often possess some clearly un-English

elements, it would be erroneous to consider those self-translations as mere freaks, oddities,

museum curiosities. Taking advantage of hitherto undisclosed and underutilized materials, I

will demonstrate that behind Brodsky’s both ostentatious and laborious involvement into the

translating process of his verse into English, there were considerations of some higher plane

of regard than just the expediency of getting translated into English.

23 „Die Kunst der Interpretation hat die Kunst der Übersetzung in Theorie wie in Praxis weit überflügelt, und man hat es nie für nötig befunden, den engen Zusammenhang von Übersetzungskunst und Interpretationskunst näher zu untersuchen.“ Quoted from Andreas Huyssen, Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung; Studien zur frühromanischen Utopie e. deutschen Weltliteratur, Ausgabe: [Teildr.] Umfang: 24 S. (Schlieren: Maier, 1969), p. 8.

13

Brodsky’s unique and genuine love of English made him consider his self-translations

as a testing ground for the revival of the tradition of formal verse and to open the path of the

cross-cultural influence within English poetry.

Such a phenomenon has had no precedence in the history of poetry translation and

deserves a wider and more unbiased discussion in the larger context of translation theory.

14

Chapter 1: Critical debate over Brodsky’s self-translations

Translations or originals?

Joseph Brodsky: Collected Poems in English (2001) can be justly considered ‘a

landmark volume in the history of poetry translation in English’,24 as suggested by one of

Brodsky’s co-translators and the author of several publications about Brodsky’s translation

activities, Daniel Weissbort. Its revolutionary effect is entailed in the author’s decision,

implemented by his editor in So Forth, to acknowledge translators and collaborators

separately from the poems. This was supposed to be understood ‘as an invitation to the reader

to consider the poems as if they were original texts in English.’25 Such an unconventional

decision promotes translation, as it were, to the status of the original. At the same time it

raises a number of questions.

What prompted a Russian born poet to take such an active part in his English

translations? Was Brodsky’s intervention into his own translations legitimate? Instances when

a prose writer like Nabokov or Conrad achieved great prominence in his second language are

quite famous: but can a poet break the linguistic barrier? Why would the author wish the

poems to be read as original texts in English and not just as translations from Russian? Do

these poems stand up to the challenge? Do they really correspond to the standards of original

English verse? Can these translated poems after all be regarded as authentic poetry in

English? What about the co-translators: did they not mind that their names cannot be found

under each poem and that they are merely annotated at the back of the book?

The debate about many of these issues started to appear regularly on pages of famous

journals, from Times Literary Supplement to New York Review of Books, beginning in 1980,

the year of the publication of A Part of Speech. The debate reached its two highest points first

after the award in 1987 to Brodsky of the Nobel Prize for literature and then in 1996,

following his untimely death, and has not ceased ever since.

Since the mid-1990s this topic has also attracted some scholarly investigation of

Brodsky’s work as a translator into and from Russian and study on the phenomenon of his

24 Daniel Weissbort. ‚Something like his own language’, (review). (March 2003) URL http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr14/reviews/weissbort.html accessed 18 Jun. 07. 25 Ann Kjellberg. ‘Editor’s Note’ to Joseph Brodsky, So Forth (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 1996) p. xiii.

15

bilingualism. And nonetheless to this day one can say with confidence that Brodsky’s self-

translations have not yet been satisfactorily studied. A combination of factors such as the

uniqueness of Brodsky’s experiment along with his growing renown as an American writer

produced an avalanche of critical opinions, without, however, resulting in genuine critical

analysis of the problems and issues involved. Both the opponents and the supporters of his

translation experiments seemed to have been locked in a stalemate, in which the former would

press the argument of the ‘non-Englishness’ of these translations, whereas the latter would

invariably point to Brodsky’s distinction as a Russian or world poet. All the while, oddly

enough, none of the participants in this debate have ever considered the possibility of

answering the questions around Brodsky’s self-translations by means of concrete textual

analysis.

The apparent irresolvability of these questions can be partly accounted for by the

specificity of the process of poetry translation itself. The constant question, which has so far

seemed to remain open, is what standards should a translation be judged by after all: those of

the source or those of the target language? Brodsky, as if willing to help his critics, wished his

English translations to be judged exclusively by the standards of the target language, i.e.

English. This brought him immediately into the firing line.

Brodsky’s critics

Brodsky’s critics can be divided clearly in two main categories: British and American.

The British critics were distinguished by their peremptory tone derived from their

impression that Brodsky was an intruder from whose ‘unsavoury’ influence they had to

protect the English language. Their attacks on Brodsky and their zeal to protect the purity of

the language of the Great Empire can only be compared to the notorious activities of

Académie française in their function as the defenders of French; their snobbery remains

unchallenged. It is curious to observe that the protective fervour of the British critics grew

proportionally to Brodsky’s rising fame in America and in the world: in 1981 he won a

MacArthur Award, in 1986 Brodsky’s Less than one garnered a National Book Award for

criticism, and in 1987 he won the Nobel Prize. In front of their eyes, a foreigner who

obviously did not belong to the right club, received acclaim and prizes. This outrage ought to

be stopped.

16

Most of these critics expressed themselves following the publication of A Part of

Speech – Brodsky’s first collection prepared under direct supervision of its author and in

which Brodsky ‘took the liberty of reworking some of the translations to bring them closer to

the original.’26 At first they only displayed their reservations about Brodsky’s intervention

into the translation process of his verse.

For instance, Peter Porter sustained in a review of A Part of Speech, published in 1980

by The Observer, that although Brodsky was fortunate in his translators and collaborators

whose names ‘read like a roll-call of an Academy of English-Speaking poets’, and despite the

circumstance that all the translation were supervised by the author with ‘so much

idiosyncratic labour and love’, those translations still produced ‘unease and lack of conviction

in the reader.’27 In another review of A Part of Speech Michael Schmidt, incidentally also

British, called Brodsky ‘his [own] worst translator.’28

The second wave of criticism came in the form of an authentic campaign against

Brodsky initiated by the British poets – these jealous guardians of the sacred establishment.

As was previously mentioned, these attacks coincided with Brodsky’s rising American and

international acclaim. Naturally enough, the award of Nobel Prize in 1987 stirred a new

onslaught of criticism. Although this prize was awarded for his achievements in Russian

poetry, it automatically boosted the popularity of his English poetry and prose: it must have

seemed too much to bestow this honor on someone for whom English was just his second

tongue. Brodsky also gave his critics a ‘good’ pretext for those attacks: in 1988 Brodsky’s

second collection in English To Urania was published under the poet’s strict supervision. In

this collection Brodsky made a decisive passage towards self-translation.

In 1988 there emerged two highly critical reviews, characteristically, as we said, from

the British shores. The first was an outspokenly vitriolic article entitled ‘Great American

Disaster’ written by Christopher Reid.29 Reid maintained that at the beginning Brodsky’s

English poems had occupied ‘a position of statelessness somewhere between Russian and

English in a neutral zone called Translationese.’ Brodsky, however, ‘dared to dispense’ (very

incautiously and unwisely, according to Reid) with the privileges of this zone and set to

26 Quoted in: Joseph Brodsky, Collected poems in English, 1972-1996; Ann Kjellberg (ed.), (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 2000) p. 507. 27 Peter Porter, ‚Satire with a Heart’, The Observer (14 December 1980) p. 28. 28 Schmidt, Michael. 'Time of Cold: A Review of A Part of Speech’, New Statesman (17 October 1980) p. 25. 29 Christopher Reid. 'Great American Disaster: review of To Urania’, London Review of Books (8 December 1988) pp. 17-18.

17

making translations and to writing ‘poems in English that demand to be judged purely on their

own merits.’30 So, Reid concluded, Brodsky could no longer be entitled to ‘generous

allowances’. Hence Reid’s merciless verdict: the ‘un-English’ quality of Brodsky’s

performance, his ‘grammatical unorthodoxy,’ his lack of understanding of English idiom, his

‘tone-deafness’ and lack of ear in the language.’31 Ironically such characteristics were

attributed to a poet who just a couple of years later, in 1991, would be elected Poet Laureate

of the United States of America.

In the second negative British review, Donald Davie maintained that because of

Brodsky’s ‘strict’ and ‘intrusive’ supervision the result was ‘less than happy’ and that the

author-translator was ‘less inward with English – especially with its rhythms and intonations –

than he supposes’. Davie’s conclusion, characteristically tinged with a reasonable amount of

malice, draws into strong doubt the success of Brodsky’s entire endeavour to bridge the gulf

between English and Russian:

… it’s true that in Britain and in the United States most critics and reviewers have tin ears, and so it’s necessary to re-state the obvious: history supplies hardly one instance of a poet writing to any purpose in anything but his native tongue. Given Brodsky’s desolate situation away from Russian-speakers, one admires the courage and energy with which he has tried to conquer this crippling disadvantage.32

The most aggressive attack by Graig Raine came right after Brodsky’s death, which

could not simply be accidental: the dead are famous for not kicking back. Raine’s main line of

attack was against Brodsky’s English. According to Raine, rather than demonstrating

‘linguistic mastery’ Brodsky was ‘unable to achieve more than a basic competence in his

adopted language’; what his English self-translations demonstrate instead is ‘foreign

ineptitude.’33 For the drawbacks in his English translations, Raine maintains, Brodsky was

alone to blame, for ‘he was recklessly reworking the translations of Anglophone poets like

Anthony Hecht and Richard Wilbur.’34 Brodsky’s English prose, which won him in January

1987 the most prestigious prize in the US, The National Book Critics Circle’s Award,35

30 Reid. 'Great American Disaster’, p. 17. 31 Ibid, p. 17. 32 Donald Davie. ‘The saturated line: review To Urania’, Times Literary Supplement (23-29 December 1988) pp. 14-15. 33 Craig Raine, ‘A Reputation Subject to Inflation’, Financial Times (16/17 November 1996) p. xix. 34 Idem ibid. I can with certainty affirm that this last bit of information (or rather public’s disinformation) was false. As I could establish from studying the FSG archival material, the corrections Brodsky did to Wilbur’s and Hecht’s translations respectively were really infinitesimal, especially when compared to the reworkings of the translations made by Kline, Weissbort and Meyers and others. 35 Lev Losev. Iosif Brodskii: opyt literaturnoi biografii [Joseph Brodsky: an experiment in literary biography] (Moskva: Molodaya Gvardiya, 2006) p. 385.

18

seemed to Raine ‘fatuous and banal’. Brodsky, Raine concludes, ‘was a nervous world-class

mediocrity – bluffing but aware of his uncertain feel for the English language on which his

international reputation was so precariously founded.’36 There was a belated attempt in 2001

by a Scottish poet Lachlan Mackinnon to expose the bias of this second group of critics and to

defend Brodsky, but his voice was soon drowned by the more potent ones in the British

literary establishment. 37

Interestingly enough, as we will see in the next section, the criticism of the first group

produced more lasting and damaging effects on the reputation of ‘English Brodsky’ among

none other than Brodsky scholars, who should seem more resistant to such barely veiled

displays of gratuitous malice as one can find in the articles by Reid, Davie and especially

Raine.

There followed less inimical reviews, for example, by Blake Morrisson, who while

admiring Brodsky’s prose, suggested that the English poems were not up to the English

prose’s high standards.38 Finally in his review of the Collected Poems in English John Bayley

still thought that Brodsky did not succeed in his ‘daring task of trying to write the same book

in both languages’ and ‘to make the two mutually convertible.’ The reason was that

‘Brodsky’s poetic ear for English was not, could not be, as unerring as his ear for the melodies

and nuances of his native tongue.’ As the result, claims Bayley, Brodsky’s ‘poems which he

either revised or wrote independently as ‘English poems do not sound right at all.’39

Brodsky’s defenders

To be sure ‘English Brodsky’ has had also favourable reviews and opinions coming

also from native speakers of English, mostly, however, American or Trans-Atlantic, which

confirms the impression of greater openness in the American literary establishment to the

foreign ‘intruders’. Among his defenders were such figures as Stephen Spender,40 Peter

Viereck41, Howard Moss,42 Richard Wilbur,43 Mark Strand,44 Anthony Hecht,45 Derek

36 Craig Raine, ‘A Reputation Subject to Inflation’, p. xix. 37 Lachlan Mackinnon. ‚A break from dullness: The virtues of Brodsky’s English verse’, TLS, (22 June 2001) p. 11. 38 Blake Morrison. ‘The Muse and Mortals’, The Independent on Sunday (24 November 1996) p. 35. 39 John Bayley. ‚The Brodsky Paradox’, Los Angeles Times (29 October 2000) pp. 4-5. 40 Stephen Spender. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1972-1984), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Folder 18. 41 See also: Peter Viereck. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1973-1994), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Fld. 9.

19

Walcott,46 Seamus Heaney,47 Susan Sontag,48 Michael Hofmann,49 and the Librarian of

Congress James Billington50 –to name just a few.

Many of these reviewers such as Spender, Wilbur, Viereck, Moss, Hecht, Walcott,

Heaney and Strand were poets themselves, most of whom shared with Brodsky an aesthetic

affinity in their preference for the formal devices in poetry. A great number of them were

either Brodsky’s associates or direct translators of his poems in English. As such they were

cognizant of the complexities of poetry translation and more predisposed to make greater

allowances for Brodsky’s translating methods. So, for instance, Richard Wilbur, the author of

‘that miracle of adaptation,’51 the translation of “Six Years Later”, urged Brodsky in a letter to

be ‘frank intolerant and insistent’ regarding Wilbur’s translations.52

As opposed to his critics, unwavering in their disproval of Brodsky’s English, some of

his supporters approved of his translations in general, despite the fact that most of them

recognized the existence of certain flaws in them, to which they themselves testified. So

Seamus Heaney said upon hearing Brodsky’s self-translations that ‘the English ear comes up

against a phonetic element that is both animated and skewed. Sometimes instinctively rebels

at having its expectations denied in terms of both syntax and velleities of stress.’53 At the

same time Heaney mentions other instances in Brodsky’s English self-translations when that

selfsame ‘English ear…yields with that unbounded assent that only the most triumphant art

can conjure and allow.’ 54 Similarly Derek Walcott, although recognizing ‘knots’ and

‘difficulties’ of Brodsky’s English, marvels at the latter’s ‘determination to render, almost to

42 See also: Howard Moss. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1982), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Fld. 38. 43 Richard Wilbur. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1977-1984), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Fld. 8. 44 See also Mark Strand. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1978-1995), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Fld.4. From now on to be quoted as ‘Brodsky Papers, Beinecke.’

45 See also Anthony Hecht. ‚Introduction’ to Joseph Brodsky. A Part of Speech. (London-New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) pp. ix-xi. 46 See also Derek Walcott. ‘Magic Industry’ [Review of To Urania by Joseph Brodsky]. The New York Review of Books.35:18 (November 24, 1988) pp. 1-12. 47 See also Seamus Heaney. ‘Brodsky’s Nobel: What the Applause Was All About’, The New York Times Review (8 November 1987) p. 18. 48 See also Sontag. ‚Joseph Brodsky’, in Where the Stress Falls, pp. 330-333. 49 See also Michael Hofmann, ‘On absenting oneself: review’, Times Literary Supplement , London (10 January 1997) pp. 6-8. 50 See Bibliography: ‘Interviews’, James Billington. 51 Walcott. ‘Magic Industry’, p. 12. 52 Wilbur, Richard. ‘Letter to Brodsky from 13 May 1977’, Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld. 8. 53 Seamus Heaney. ‘Brodsky’s Nobel: What the Applause Was All About’, The New York Times Review (8 November 1987) p. 1. 54 Heaney. ‘Brodsky’s Nobel: What the Applause Was All About’, p. 18.

20

deliver, the poem from its original language into the poetry of the new country.’55 In the same

manner, Michael Hofmann mentions that although some of the Brodsky’s verse in English

could sound like ‘arrant and most provocative translationese … yet the reader continues to

endow it with the status of an original, fully intended and supervised in every detail.’56 Such

tolerance on the part of the reader owes its origin to the fact that the reader ‘accepts that it is

only by some miracle that this writing exists in English at all.’57 Hofmann also speaks of the

reluctance of the critics to accept Brodsky in his own English – which Hofmann describes as

Brodsky’s ‘an anarchic gift to his adopted language’ – as rather ‘churlish.’ 58 (It might be

mentioned that both Walcott and Hofmann are often regarded as foreign ‘intruders’

themselves).

Susan Sontag, who not knowing Russian, read Brodsky solely in English, found his

translations sufficiently competent enough to appreciate the poet’s genius:

I think of Joseph Brodsky as a world poet – partly because I cannot read him in Russian; mainly because that’s the range he commanded in his poems, with their extraordinary velocity and density of material notation, of cultural reference, of attitude. 59

Lastly, the Librarian of Congress James Billington, responsible for the appointment of

Brodsky as the Poet Laureate of the U.S. of America in 1991, shared his opinion in an

interview conducted by me at the Library of Congress in February earlier this year. Billington

suggested that Brodsky’s English, with all its imported foreignising influence, was precisely a

manifestation of this typically American phenomenon, which continuously helps to revive the

country’s poetry. 60

Brodsky scholarship: translations as mere shades of originals

Whereas the general scholarship on Brodsky as a Nobel Prize winning Russian poet

has boomed, the investigation of his self-translating patrimony has been very scarce. This

relative lack of interest for the self-translating facet of Brodsky can be explained in part by the

existence of the large body of negative criticism quoted in the section above devoted to

55 Walcott. ‘Magic Industry,’ p. 2. 56 See also Michael Hofmann, ‘On absenting oneself: review’, pp. 6-7. 57 Ibid, p. 7. 58 Ibid, p. 8. 59 Sontag. ‚Joseph Brodsky,’ p. 332. 60 See Bibliography, ‘Interviews’, Billington.

21

‘Brodsky’s critics’: Brodsky’s Russian poems must have appeared a considerably safer

ground for the researchers.

Among those who eventually ventured to enter the ‘shaky’ field of studies dealing

with Brodsky’s self-translating patrimony, caution and uncertainty reigned. The general

research method has so far been reduced to some not altogether convincing and half-hearted

attempts at contesting the adverse criticism. It seemed as though the scholars, coming so far

exclusively from Slavic and Comparative Literature departments, did not possess sufficient

authority in the field and were left to rely on commonly held beliefs of others. The main

strategy has been to juxtapose the set of opposite opinions on Brodsky’s self-translations in

the hope it seemed that with time more favourable judgements will come to outnumber the

negative ones, as if the negative critique could be simply counterbalanced by the sheer force

of numbers. (Thus, as late as in 2006 Volgina writes: ‘Assessments of the Anglophone

Brodsky are all over the map, and it is difficult to say which viewpoint will prevail in the

future’.) 61

As a matter of fact though, despite this continuous pursuit of favourable views on

Brodsky in English, the scholars have been much more haunted and influenced by those

negative ones. There seemed to be a sneaking suspicion among them that because Brodsky’s

defenders knew him personally or were his direct associates in translation (e.g. Walcott,

Hecht and Viereck), they must have been enchanted by Brodsky’s personal charisma and, as

the consequence were more predisposed to make greater allowances for the eccentricities of

his English poems.62 To make the scholar’s situation even more difficult, as the most

favourable of the reviewers themselves were the first to admit, it was not without some

provisos that Brodsky’s self-translations might be promoted into the body of authentic

English poetry.

Thus, as we will see below, no fundamental changes took place in this field of inquiry

in the time span between 1998 and 2006.

In 1998 Valentina Polukhina tried to expand the field of inquiry by sending

questionnaires to forty British poets with questions about Brodsky in English, as she recounts

61 Volgina, Arina. ‘Iosif Brodskii and Joseph Brodsky’, Russian Studies in Literature: A Journal of Translations, 42:3 (Summer 2006) p. 17. 62 See also Volgina. ‘Iosif Brodskii and Joseph Brodsky’, p. 15.

22

in her article “Angliiskii Brodskii” (English Brodsky) (1998).63 She does not, however,

essentially change the perspective and the same views continue to be ruminated and re-

discussed over and over again on the pages of dissertations and articles dedicated to the

subject.

So, as late as in 2002 Natalia Rulyova in her PhD dissertation ‘Joseph Brodsky:

Translating Oneself’, which contains interesting excursions into translation theory, finds

herself under the spell of the same stock tropes and falls prey to them. In her attempt to cope

with the negative criticism of ‘English Brodsky’ she suggests a ‘proper’ way in which

Brodsky’s poems in English are, according to her, supposed to be read. In what she herself

entitled a ‘Polemic Conclusion’ of her dissertation, Rulyova writes: ‘Brodsky’s author-

translations are products of a secondary creative impulse and, therefore, are individual and

unique but, at the same time, tied to the Russian source text.’ 64 Therefore, she concludes,

‘reading Brodsky in English as if his texts originate in English can be misleading.’65 This does

not really lead one anywhere: Rulyova merely finds herself as it were defending Brodsky

from his own intentions that the poems be read as originals.

In like manner Arina Volgina dedicates most of her relatively recent article ‘Iosif

Brodskii and Joseph Brodsky’ (2006) to dealing with yet again the same set of stock tropes of

negative responses to Brodsky’s English self-translations. Without making any attempt at

questioning the critique of English Brodsky, or even distinguishing between an organised

campaign against and objectively expressed reservations (i.e. between Davie, Reid and Rain

on the one hand and Peter Porter on the other) Volgina attributes all the responsibility for this

critique to Brodsky’s ‘apparent independence from his Russian alter ego’ which was reflected

in his ‘desire to be read in English, in the context of Anglo-American poetry, and without

regard to the Russian original.’ 66 This is what Volgina writes:

Here the poet is, to all intents and purposes, hoist with his own petard, for instead of protecting his Russian alter ego from the pronouncements of the incompetent and serving as a vade mecum on that alter ego for the Anglophone reader who has to (Sic.)

63 Valentina Polukhina. ‘Angliiskii Brodskii’ [English Brodsky], Iosif Brodskii: Tvorchestvo, lichnost’, sud’ba. Itogi trekh konferentsii. [Joseph Brodsky: art, persona, life. Summary of three conferences] (St. Petersburg: Zhurnal ‘Zvezda’, 1998) p. 49-59. 64 Natalia E. Rulyova. ‘Joseph Brodsky: Translating Oneself’: PhD dissertation. (University of Cambridge, June 2002) p. 144. 65 Rulyova. ‘Joseph Brodsky: Translating Oneself’, p. 144. 66 Volgina. ‘Iosif Brodskii and Joseph Brodsky’, p. 16.

23

courage to read Russian, Joseph Brodsky actually replaces Iosif Brodskii, thereby casting his international reputation into doubt. 67

According to Volgina, Brodsky should have used his Russian ‘laurels’ as a shield

against the adverse (but perfectly just, Volgina seems to suggest) native Anglophone

criticism. Brodsky, on the other hand, chose to be read in English and ‘hence’, quite naturally

in Volgina’s opinion, deserved ‘the devastating reviews by Peter Porter, Donald Davie,

Christopher Reid and Graig Raine.’68 Having mentioned yet again the self-same negative

uncontested assessments of Brodsky in English, Volgina quite unexpectedly, without making

any attempt to explain how she had got there, arrives at a rather flabbergasting conclusion:

Joseph Brodsky is Iosif Brodskii’s ideal translator: he precisely reproduces the poetic structure of the original and consciously rejects smoothness of line, forcing the English language to imitate the poetic intonation of Russian and motivating the reader to drill down to the source text.69

One might justly question: why does one need a translation in the first place, if one is

afterwards expected to drill down to the source text? Does there exist such a fancy device

with which to perform this odd operation? Or did Brodsky simply expect his English-speaking

readers to collectively enrol in Russian classes in order to convince themselves that he was

after all indeed an ‘ideal translator’ of himself, as Volgina suggests?

Trading in opinions, as I call it, has taken such a deep root in Brodsky criticism in

recent years that Volgina does not even care to provide proofs of her conclusions or defend

them with facts based on analysis of concrete translational materials. Instead she comes up

with something even more fantastic:

It is possible that the “English Brodsky” was producing his poems for just … Russian-reading Anglophone readers. It may also be that he conceived his self-translations as guide-books to his authentic – his Russian – poetry, as a kind of self-commentary that is not refined to the smoothness of an independent production and is only there to help the non-native-Russian reader make sense of the multileveled Russian text and clarify for himself its poetic structure.70

Volgina seems to suggest that Brodsky translated his poems into English, thereby

investing so much of his energy, time and effort in this equally nerve-racking process both for

him and for his co-translators, and exposing himself to the vehement criticism of the native

critics – merely as an academic exercise. But it is well known that Brodsky was ever

67 Ibid., p. 16. 68 Idem. 69 Ibid., p. 18. 70 Ibid., p. 16.

24

unwilling to provide any commentaries to his poems whatsoever. Needless to say such a

suggestion is not only nonsensical, but also very indicative of the lamentable state of research,

so far dedicated to the subject of Brodsky’s self-translations.71

Brodsky scholarship: need for change

‘A poet must be judged by his intention.’ (from ‘Letter to Lord Byron’ W.H. Auden) 72

What has been going on so far in the field of the critical studies on Brodsky’s

experiments of self-translation could be reduced to a single dialogue in which the critics

would say: ‘– This is not English’ and the scholars, having nothing better to offer in response,

persistently reiterate: ‘– Look at the originals: in Russian he is great.’ This has brought the

whole debate to a deadlock. How might one escape from this deadlock?

In the meantime, as early as in 1988 Derek Walcott suggested that the allegations of

‘un-Englishness’, to which the Slavic scholars have so far so surrendered, might be after all

not altogether sound:

If some critic of Brodsky’s work says “this isn’t English,” the critic is right in the wrong way. He is right in the historical, the grammatical sense, by which I do not mean grammatical errors, but a given grammatical tone. This is not “plain American, which dogs and cats can read,” the barbarous, chauvinistic boast of the poet as mass thinker, as monosyllabic despot; but the same critic, in earlier epochs, might have said the same thing about Donne, Milton, Browning, Hopkins. …. There is a sound to Brodsky’s English that is peculiarly his, and this sound is often one of difficulty. 73

If one was to assume, as Walcott suggests, that Brodsky’s eccentricities of English

simply reflected the idiosyncrasies of his singular poetic voice (with all its Russian

vibrations), then, instead of entering into a fruitless and abstract polemic with the critics, one

could equally well dedicate this phenomenon a thorough and detailed textual study. Such an

attempt is long overdue.

It is high time to recognize that the work of Brodsky the poet is an indivisible sum of

his Russian and English verse – indivisible precisely because both their corpora lead an

71 Rulyova also points out the lack of thorough criticism on the subject of Brodsky’s self-translations and sets herself to produce a change. Her attempt is, however, hampered by the fact that she falls in the trap of having to justify Brodsky from criticism on terms set by his critics. See also Rulyova. ‘Joseph Brodsky: Translating Oneself’: PhD dissertation, Cambridge University Library. p. 15. 72 Auden, Wystan Hugh. Collected Poems, Ed. Edward Mendelson (London: Faber & Faber, 1976) p. 89. 73 Derek Walcott. ‘Magic Industry’, p. 4.

25

existence in their own right and display merits and flaws in their own right. Thus Derek

Walcott:

What is extraordinary, in fact phenomenal in its effort, is the determination to render, almost to deliver, the poem from its original language into the poetry of the new country. To give the one work, simultaneously, two mother tongues. … [the poems] are not so much translated as re-created, by Brodsky himself, an achievement that makes him an even greater poet than we shruggingly acknowledge him to be.74

This is again just another opinion, the pedants might object; in answering these

pedants one could actually go even further and say that it is ultimately not relevant whether

Brodsky did succeed or not in producing genuine English poems, as many critics have so far

endeavored to disprove. What actually matters is that his self-translations became through his

touch-ups and reworking creations radically independent of the originals.

In the same assessment Walcott tries to describe the mechanisms of the linguistic

transplantation Brodsky achieved in his self-translations:

A great modern Russian poet, an heir of Mandelstam, is plenty for one man to be in his lifetime, but to have re-created from the original Russian a poem as spacious, as botanically precise, as delightful in its rhymes as his ‚Eclogue V: Summer’, and then to think of Edmund Spencer’s ghost rustling behind its pages, to recall Keats and Clare in their own language, is more than a technical feat of adaptation. There is, for one reader, no yearning for the original Russian, no sense of vacancy, of something lost or not rendered. It is the industry of magic. 75

Long before Brodsky undertook his gargantuan enterprise of self-translation, a

possibility of such a transformation was hypothetically conceived of by Auden by mere force

of imagination:

It is conceivable that a genuine bilingual poet might write what, to him, was the same lyric in two languages, but if someone else were then to make a literal translation of each version into the language of the other, no reader would be able to recognize their connection. 76

Many of Brodsky’s critics might again hasten to object that he was not after all the

‘genuinely bilingual poet’ Auden describes. Yet what they could not deny is that Brodsky’s

‘phenomenal effort’ highlights the essential questions of poetry’s translatability: Why are

there some elements in poetry that can be translated while others cannot? Are there some

elements in poetry which are separable from their original verbal expressions and what are

74 Derek Walcott. ‘Magic Industry’ [Review of To Urania by Joseph Brodsky]. The New York Review of Books.35:18 (November 24, 1988) p. 2. 75 Derek Walcott. ‘Magic Industry,’ p. 2. 76 Wystan Hugh Auden. Forewords & Afterwords, p. 334.

26

they? For the purposes of shedding some new light on these questions alone Brodsky’s self-

translations merit a thorough and detailed study.

Rather than simply by saying point blank, ‘this isn’t English,’ it might well be more

productive to investigate with reference to concrete examples what it actually involves to

translate a poem from Russian into English, by such a poet as Brodsky, written in a certain

verse metre, treating a certain theme, using a certain type of rhymes, certain set of cultural

references etc. etc. It is high time to venture such an attempt and it will be undertaken in the

pages to follow.

English Brodsky: a new perspective

The present PhD project is the first study to deal with the subject of Brodsky’s self-

translations from the perspective of English literature. For the first time, the translations of

Brodsky are from the outset considered to belong to the body of English literature. On the one

hand, this respects the poet’s repeated wish for them to be regarded as authentic English

creations. On the other, this decision is dictated by Brodsky’s unique and exclusive attitude

towards the English language:

Although Brodsky remained a Russian poet first, his unique relationship to his adoptive language, filled with vigor and affection, brought forth body of work resting somewhere between translation and original creation, internally coherent, rich in linguistic and prosodic invention, and quickened by the spirit that had made him a great poet in his native Russian. If, as Brodsky wrote, a writer’s biography is in his twists of language, an important chapter of his own story resides in these poems, exactingly rendered into his beloved second tongue.77

Brodsky many times repeated in his interviews as well as letters to his translators that

his main driving force in undertaking corrections to the translated versions of others was his

special attitude towards the English language and poetry, his almost obsessive love of it

(‘…his manifest love for English verse, which amounts almost to a possessiveness…’

(Heaney).78). So, for instance, in an interview given to Sven Birkerts in 1982 Brodsky

maintained that his main motivation in reworking his translations was neither excessive worry

whether a certain line of his original was not badly rendered into English; nor did he aspire to

further his career in American letters with the help of these self-translations. What Brodsky

77 Kjellberg. ‘Editor’s Note’ to So Forth, p. xiv. 78 Heaney. ‘Brodsky’s Nobel: What the Applause Was All About,’ p. 18.

27

was after, according to his own claims, was to sustain in his self-translations a certain

standard of the English language:

I have the poem in the original, that’s enough. I’ve done it and for better or worse it stays there. My Russian laurels – or lack of them – satisfy me enough. I’m not after a good seat on the American Parnassus. The thing that bothers me about many of those translations is that they are not very good English. It may have to do with the fact that my affair with the English language is fairly fresh, fairly new, and therefore perhaps I’m subject to some extra sensitivity. So what bothers me is not so much that the line of mine is bad – what bothers me is the bad line in English. 79

If one was to accept the accusations of Brodsky’s critics about his linguistic

incompetence in English at face value, his assertion that his main concern in intervening in his

self-translations was to preserve the dignity of the English language would pass for pure

presumption. If, on the other hand, we were to cast aside, at least for a while, the critics’

accusations as mere manifestations of native speakers’ chauvinistic arrogance and snobbery,

then an unprejudiced investigation into what Brodsky’s conceptions of a ‘dignified’ English

language actually presupposed, could be well worth our while. It is the latter approach that I

suggest.

The decision to study Brodsky from within the realm of English literature has been

corroborated by many of Brodsky’s associates such as Barry Rubin and George L. Kline,

Brodsky’s literary executor Ann Kjellberg, the Librarian of Congress James Billington as well

as Brodsky’s widow and the head of the Joseph Brodsky Estate, Maria Sozzani.80

The present study, in contrast to the most of the articles, reviews and dissertations

which have been written so far about the subject, whether negative or positive, is not based

upon ready-made beliefs. It proceeds rather via a minute textual analysis, trying to reveal in

detail (often applying line-by-line analysis) the logic of the author-translator when he was

prompted to make this or that specific decision. I will attempt to show how the re-creation of

the ‘same’ poem in English proceeded, what stood in its way, where Brodsky the author-

translator succeeded and where he failed, and try to conjecture in each case why this occurred.

79 Birkerts, Sven. ‘The Art of Poetry XXVIII: Joseph Brodsky: Interview’, Paris Review 24, (Spring 1982) pp. 82-126. Quoted in: Joseph Brodsky. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations. Cynthia Haven (ed.), (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002) pp. 73-74. 80 Personal conversations with Maria Sozzani (Milano, January 2005), Ann Kjellberg (New York, June 2005), James Billington (Washington DC, January 2007), George Kline (Anderson, South Carolina, January 2007), Barry Rubin (New York, February 2007), Derek Walcott (New Haven, October 2007), Richard Wilbur (New Haven, December, 2007).

28

Given that in poetry form is inseparable from the content, as was said at the beginning,

I shall attempt to establish what kind of effect a combination of a certain form with a certain

context produced in the original, whether there existed any tension between them and,

ultimately, whether it was after all possible to preserve those elements in translation.

At the same time I shall seek to assess how these decisions fit within the English

prosodic and broader poetic tradition and which contrasts with the respective Russian

traditions they reveal.

29

Chapter 2: Archival research: gathering materials,

cataloguing, interviews

Archival research, cataloguing and interviews are the sine qua non of the present

dissertation. Meetings and correspondence with Brodsky associates have clarified many of my

ideas about Brodsky’s life and position in the United States of America as a person and a

poet. Inestimable information obtained from persons who either knew Brodsky personally or

were directly involved in his translations provided me with unique insights into Brodsky’s

motivation to translate his poetry into English. It would not have been possible to obtain such

information from merely reading the critical literature.

This thesis draws nearly upon new evidence and new research materials gained

through direct library and archival research at the St. Petersburg National Library (2004),

Cambridge University Library (2004), New York Public Library (2005), Library of Congress

in Washington (2007) as well as, above all, in the Brodsky Estate at the Beinecke Rare Book

and Manuscript Library, Yale (June-November 2005) as a researcher, and as a cataloguing

archivist (September-May 2008). Their materials enormously enriched the scope of the

present project. Research in these archives and libraries brought to light documentary

materials not previously accessed by other researchers. The extent of these research materials

goes well beyond the existing critical literature. This factor should enable this present project

to produce, I hope, a change in the perspective of the subject of Brodsky’s self-translations.

Such a new perspective could help break the prolonged impasse which critical debate has

reached in the last decade or so as the result of simply posing one set of ‘contrasting views’

against another, as opposed to the analysis of concrete textual materials on the subject.

Beyond the extensive archival materials upon which the thesis draws, other less

tangible resources have been of inestimable importance.

A number on non-print format archival materials were of significance, especially

recordings, films and videos of Brodsky reading his poetry, which afforded an idea of the

concrete realisation of his prosodic theories.

Private correspondence between me and many of Brodsky’s friends and collaborators

filled some of the gaps in the archival material. Letters graciously provided by Alexander

Sumerkin, Ann Kjellberg, George L. Kline, Peter France, Daniel Weissbort and Barry Rubin

supplemented what could be learnt from the archives listed above.

30

I have benefited from the recollections and anecdotes of many people who knew

Brodsky or worked with him. Conversations with Anne Kjellberg (Brodsky’s literary

executor), Alexander Sumerkin (Brodsky’s friend, Russian secretary and editor of Brodsky’s

last Russian collection of verse Peizazh S Navodneniyem), Barry Rubin (Brodsky’s friend,

translator and associate), Derek Walcott (Brodsky’s friend and Nobel Laureate), Nancy

Meiselas (Brodsky’s secretary at Farrar, Straus & Giroux publishing house in New York),

George L. Kline (Brodsky’s translator and co-translator as well as a close associate) ,

Valentina Polukhina (a Brodsky scholar), Daniel Weissbort (Brodsky’s translator and co-

translator), James Billington (the Librarian of Congress) provided a wealth of important

information on Brodsky’s life in the USA, his position in American letters as well as his

translating and self-translating activity. Conversations with the Lady Natasha Spender (the

widow of Stephen Spender) and Edward Mendelson (literary executor of W.H. Auden) shed

some new light upon Brodsky’s early days in the West, his historic meetings with Auden and

Spender as well as some details about their subsequent friendships. My conversations with

Yakov Gordin (Russian poet, Brodsky’s friend and editor) and Vladimir Uflyand (close friend

of Brodsky and his favourite Russian contemporary poet) elucidated for me some hitherto

unknown details of Brodsky’s early period in the Soviet Union. Maria Sozzani (Brodsky’s

widow and the head of the Brodsky Estate) shared with me in a conversation her

reminiscences of Brodsky’s later period in their common apartment in Brooklyn, New York.

When the interlocutors gave permission, these conversations were recorded and thus exist as

private audio material.

Research Results

This thesis offers new insights upon Brodsky as a self-translator precisely because it

draws upon the hitherto unaccessed materials described above.

Access to the archival materials alongside discussions with Brodsky’s friends and

associates in America clarified many matters that had remained heretofore unclear. Namely,

that right from the outset the English language was Brodsky’s immediate environment in

America. Hence it was of primary importance to Brodsky to establish his reputation as a poet

and as a writer first and foremost in the English language. Brodsky’s reputation as a poet in

his newfound literary environment depended on the way his works were translated into

English. This determined translation strategies not previously identified by other researchers.

31

Once the way the poet related to the American public and the way his highly

idiosyncratic manner of reciting poetry both in Russian and English was received by that

public became clear, Brodsky’s audiences were enthralled by his personal charm, wit, mastery

of and love for the English language and English-language poetry. Despite his accent and

emphatic manner of recitation (which stood in such a contrast with the self-effacing

recitations of most American poets) Brodsky attracted large audiences of admirers of his

English verse.

Joseph Brodsky’s personal charisma, his energy, and his respect for the English

language made him an unchallenged promoter of both English and Russian poetry in America

during his lifetime. Contrary to the perceptions of many a Russian researcher wishing to claim

him as exclusively a Russian poet, it has become increasingly obvious that even before his

untimely death in 1996 Joseph Brodsky had been recognized as a significant authority and a

part of American cultural patrimony by some major figures of the American poetic and

literary landscape. Moreover, Joseph Brodsky played a very prominent role in the shaping of

this same landscape as, for example, when during his diligent tenure as Poet Laureate in 1991-

1992, he promoted putting poetry collections in hotel rooms and selling them in American

supermarkets.

Working in the English language, whether translating or writing poetry, was for

Brodsky an absorbing process, one quite different from his compositional norms in Russian. It

gave him a chance to explore the possibilities of another language and with it another

sensibility which the use of this language implies. As an illustration of what Brodsky

understood under a different sensibility, I shall quote here a passage from a draft of his

unpublished essay written at his later period called ‘Learning English’. In this essay Brodsky

describes how he right from his youth associated the sound of the English language with

certain moral values:

I should take pity on you, the audience, since for all your colonial past, you can’t have any idea as to the impact of English monosyllabics upon a psyche formed by a polysillabic language. You can never total what a Russian or, for example, an Italian experiences at hearing something like “John Keats”, “John Donne”, “King James”, “Robert Frost” or for that matter “Andrew Marvell”, “Thomas Hardy”, “Wystan Hugh Auden”, “W.B.Yeats”, “Thomas Stearns Eliot”. For an Easterner or a Southerner there is a terrific finality to these names, abruptness, a sense of arrested destiny. They sound positively Northern, and he associates with them all those virtues of the North: the proximity to an absolute, resolve, reserve, the spirit of responsibility, grey eye. The closest you may come to the sense of I am trying to convey is the trumpet movements

32

in Purcell’s “Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary” where the intense sentiment, grief to be precise, doesn’t make a meal out of itself.81

In the quote above, interestingly enough, Brodsky links these ‘Northern’ values with

certain grammatical properties of English, in particular, its monosyllabic nature. English as

opposed to such languages as Italian or Russian displays a certain scarcity of sound – therein,

according to Brodsky, lies also its propensity for straightforwardness and reserve. Brodsky

cherished a real love for both the language and the sensibility behind it for the greater part of

his life.

In his disputes with translators over his corrections of their translating versions,

Brodsky’s frequent argument was that his greatest concern was ‘dignity of the English

language’ in his translations. However paradoxical in the light of the criticism accusing

Brodsky of ‘insufficient’ English such a claim might appear, this claim alongside other

previously undiscovered archival materials suggests that these experiments in self-translation

should be seen within a framework of Brodsky’s ‘larger project’. This ‘larger project’ could

be summarized as a demonstration, via the process of self-translation out of a highly

formalized poetic context, of the possibilities and the advantages of formal verse over free

verse in English.

A critical analysis of a large body of hitherto inaccessible archival material suggests,

overwhelmingly, that it was precisely Brodsky’s special attitude towards English that

culminated in this ambition to demonstrate on the example of his self-translations the

potential of the compositional devices of the formal verse for the future development of

English poetry. This ‘larger project’ was nothing more or less than an attempt to reconfigure

the trends of American poetry. It certainly helps to explain Brodsky’s willingness to subject

himself to the merciless critiques which his translation activity engendered.

81 Joseph Brodsky, ‘Learning English’, (unpublished essay), Brodsky Papers, Beinicke, Box 12 Fld16.

33

Chapter 3: Theoretical standpoints and hypotheses

‘Translation – is like a woman: if she is pretty, she is not faithful; if she is faithful – she is plain. (A Proverb)82

In his study Die frühromantische Konzeption von Uebersetzung und Aneignung

Andreas Hyussen outlined the two principal trends amongst the various theories of poetical

translation in modern European literatures:

Die moderne literarische Übersetzung hat einen doppelten Ursprung: einerseits die geheiligte biblische Übersetzung, die Gewissenhaftigkeit und hohen Respekt vor dem Originaltext, dem Wort Gottes, sowie die Selbstaufgabe des Übersetzers verlangt gegenüber dem Schriftdenkmal, das für die Ewigkeit verfasst ist und an dem etwas zu ändern einer Hybris vor Gott gleichkommt; andererseits – vor allem bei der Aneignung klassisch antiker Literatur – das ästhetische Bemühen, die sensitive Empfänglichkeit für die Vollkommenheit des sprachlichen Kunstgebildes, die Faszination des Fremden, in das sich beim Übersetzen Eigenes mischt, und das erst in dieser Mischung voll und gültig erkannt wird; in diesem Sinne ist Übersetzen nicht sklavisches Reproduzieren – ein Vorwurf, der immer wieder erhoben wurde - , sondern verdoppeltes Dichtertum. Aus diesem zweifachen Ursprung der Übersetzungstheorie entstanden die sich vermeintlich ausschließenden Auffassungen vom wörtlichen und vom sinngemäßen Übersetzen, deren meist unfruchtbarer Streit die Geschichte der Übersetzungstheorie prägt.83

The quoted passage from Huyssen’s book essentially shows the two main vectors, the

two extremes of theoretical approaches of the translation theory: namely the trend towards

literalness, on the one hand, and towards paraphrase and adaptation (“Aneignung”), on the

other. For the purposes of a summary Huyssen does not point out quite understandably all the

possible hybrid trends, which exist in the vast regions between the above-delineated poles. In

the present chapter I will try to show Brodsky’s position on the invisible scale between these

two theoretical extremes.

82 Quoted in: Kornei Chukovski, Perevody Prosaicheskie [Prosaic Translations] (Petrograd: “Vsemirnaia literatura”, 1919) p. 7. 83 Andreas Huyssen, Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung; Studien zur frühromanischen Utopie e. deutschen Weltliteratur, Ausgabe: [Teildr.] Umfang: 24 S. (Schlieren: Maier, 1969), p. 12.

34

Brodsky and the tradition of Russian poets-translators

Brodsky articulated his theory of translation in the numerous interviews he gave in

America as well as in his reviews of translations of Akhmatova and Mandelstam (See a

detailed discussion of it in Chapter Five). As far as translation theory was concerned, Brodsky

was a traditionalist at least in Russian terms. He believed that it was just as important in

translation to render the formal structure of the original such as rhymes, verse metre, rhyme

patterns and stanzaic design as it was to render the content.

The Russian tradition of poetic translation has its origin in eighteenth century in the

epoch of classicism, which for a while was the leading influence in Russian literature. Neither

Nicolas Boileau nor Lomonosov, Trediakovsky, Sumarokov, who all derived their ideas from

Boileau, distinguished between the national cultures, nor between individual talents. In poetic

art, ideas occupied the principal position, while the work of art itself was anonymous. The

idea of the absolute artistic value of an artistic creation was at the core of the aesthetics of

eighteenth-century Russian classicism. If the author could not bring to full expression the

ideas of his work, it became the task of the translator to improve and to complete the work. If

the same work had already been translated by several predecessors, the translator could and

even should have tried to use all their achievements in order to continue and improve on their

work: 84

The notorious disregard of the translators for the translated text should be linked to the fact that most of the dramatic pieces’ translations were regarded as approximations to the absolute [artistic] value. Because the author of the original had not achieved his goal but had merely approximated himself to it, the translator deemed necessary to use the original author’s achievements as well as those of other poets who came after him and to add to them one’s own achievements; one should take the original one step further from the place where the author had stopped, one should embellish and improve the original… A translation that changes and corrects the text increases the value of the original, for the real goal is to offer the reader a valuable work, if possible, close to the ideal… (Transl. Z.I.) 85

84 See also Grigorii Gukovskii, „K voprosu o russkom classitsisme“ (On the subject of Russian classicism), Rannie raboty po istorii russkoi poezii XVIII veka (Early works on the history of the XVIII c. Russian poetry. ed. V.M. Zhivov (Moskva: „Iazyki russkoi kul’tury“, 2001), p. 271. 85 Gukovskii, „K voprosu o russkom classitsisme“p. 271. Original quote runs as follows: “Именно с тем обстоятельством, что большинство переводимых пиес рассматривались как приближения к абсолютной ценности, следует связать пресловутое неуважение переводчиков к переводимому тексту. Поскольку автор оригинала не достиг цели, а лишь приблизился к ней, нужно, отправляясь от достигнутого им и воспользовавшись достижениями поэтов, пришедших после него, прибавить к его достоинствам новые; нужно сделать еще один шаг вперед по пути, на котором остановился автор подлинника, нужно украсить, улучшить оригинальный текст ... Перевод изменяющий и исправляющий текст – лишь служит

35

The differences between languages should not represent obstacles for an absolute

translation. Achieving such a translation would only be impeded by the lack of development

of the language of translation. These aesthetic principles led to practice of “collective”

translations as well as widespread poetic borrowings.

In the early nineteenth century a veritable revolution took place in Russian literary

language. The innovative developments in the language of prose introduced from French by

Karamzin were taken up by the poets Batyushkov and Zhukovsky (a good part of works of

these poems consist of translations from French, Italian and especially German and English in

the case of Zhukovsky). These early nineteenth-century poets as well as the translator of Iliad

into Russian, N.I. Gnedich, gradually abandoned the classicistic positions of an ahistoric

humanism, of the absolute, ideal work of art, of the translation oriented on the contemporary

“harmonious” taste as well as the classicistic principle of an embellishing translation.86 These

changes in aesthetics did not occur without strong influence of German Romantic

theoreticians such as Herder, Schlegel, Schleiermacher, Novalis and others.87 The new

conception of translation of these thinkers and translators, which differed from that of their

classicistic predecessors, was formulated by the most systematic of them, Schleiermacher, in

his essay "Uber die verschiedenen Methoden des Ubersetzens."88 (1813) and summed up by

Andreas Hyussen:

Die verschiedenen Stufen des Übersetzens bei Schleiermacher haben eines gemeinsam. Nachbildung, Paraphrase und eigentliche Übersetzung setzen voraus, dass sich der Übersetzer der Fremdheit des Originals bewusst ist und dieses Fremde auf jeweils verschiedenem Wege in die eigene Sprache zu übertragen oder umzusetzen strebt.89

And yet, as shown by Efim Etkind in his exhaustive book Russkie poety-perevodchiki

ot Trediakovskogo do Pushkina 90 (Russian poets-translators from Trediakovsky to Pushkin),

both Batyushkov and Zhukovsky were still standing on the threshold of what was to become

на пользу достоинству этого последнего. Важно ведь дать читателю хорошее произведение, по возможности близкое идеальному...” 86 See also Efim Etkind. Russkie poety-perevodchiki ot Trediakovskogo do Pushkina. (Russian poets-translators from Trediakovsky to Pushkin), (Leningrad: Izdatelstvo “Nauka”, 1973), 17-27. 87 Ibid., pp. 75-77. 88 Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher. "Uber die verschiedenen Methoden des Ubersetzens," (1813) Akademievorträge. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. ed. M. Rössler, Erste Abt. Schriften und Entwürfe, Band 11 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 67-93. 89 Andreas Huyssen, Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung; Studien zur frühromanischen Utopie e. deutschen Weltliteratur, (Zürich: Atlantis Verlag, 1969) p. 127. 90 Efim Etkind. Russkie poety-perevodchiki ot Trediakovskogo do Pushkina. (Leningrad: Izdatelstvo “Nauka”, 1973).

36

the Russian mainstream conception of translation. In fact, they still displayed, in a rudimental

form, the tendencies of the classicist approach to translation mentioned earlier. Both these

poets enriched Russian poetry immensely with new tropes and imagery, which they borrowed

from other literatures, but some of the formal aspects of poetry were perceived both by

Batyushkov and Zhukovsky as neutral and abstract. Thus Etkind writes that Zhukovsky used

indiscriminately the same verse metres in Russian (e.g. iambic pentameter) as metrical

equivalent in the translation of different originals written in different verse metres:

What is hexameter from Zhukovsky’s point of view? It is merely an empty vessel, in which one can pour any semantic or stylistic content; it is for him a sort of conditionally-narrative verse, which has no historic or cultural relevance. It is free from associative connections. Essentially, Zhukovsky viewed other poetic forms in the same way, for example, the blank verse pentameter, which he used in a broad and indifferent manner. 91 (Transl. Z.I.)

Batyushkov displayed a similar attitude. For example, while translating from Tibullus

Batyushkov used distich to translate the alexandrine of the Ancient Greek. Here is an excerpt

from Etkind’s book:

Despite all the attention that Batyushkov pays to the imagery of the original, he uses alexandrine verse metre with the same indifference as Zhukovsky used pentameter and hexameter for a narrative. […] Similarly to Zhukovsky, Batyushkov renders different poetic forms of the original with the same verse metre [in Russian]. [On one occasion, for example], he translates Tibullus by substituting the distich of the ancient Greek with alexandrine; he does the same when he translates the hendecasyllabic octaves of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). [….] In this respect Batyushkov is similar to Zhukovsky.92 (Transl. Z.I.)

Etkind suggests that it was not until Pushkin that idea of the union between form and

content had entirely established itself in Russian poetry:

Before Pushkin’s time the content and form were more or less separated. There was a gap between them, which led to an autonomy of the external form: most of all this relates to the verse meter, the rhythm and the lexical composition of verse. Only in

91 Efim Etkind. Russkie poety-perevodchiki ot Trediakovskogo do Pushkina, pp. 111-112. Original quote: „Что же такое, с точки зрения Жуковского, гекзаметр? Пустой сосуд, в который может быть налито любое смысловое (стилистическое) содержание; некий условно-повествовательный стих, лишенный историко-культурной подкрепленности, свободный от ассоциативных связей. В сущности, Жуковский так же смотрел и на другие стиховые формы, например на белый пятистопный ямб, который употреблял широко и безразлично.” 92 Ibid. etkind p. 145. Original quote: „При всем внимании к образному строю оригинала Батюшков пользовался александрийским стихом с таким же безразличием, с каким Жуковский употреблял для повествования в стихах пятистопный ямб и гекзаметр.[...] Батюшков, подобно Жуковскому, одним и тем же стихом передает различные формы подлинника, александрийский стих в переводах из Тибулла заменяет древнегреческий дистих, в переводе из «Освобожденного Иерусалима Тассо».... В этом смысле Батюшков был ненамного более разборчив, чем Жуковский.“

37

Pushkin’s … oeuvre every singular inner and outer artistic element is enclosed in a single system, which is ruled by an overriding principle. The meaning, style and sound: all these three components of the poetic word had at last formed an unbreakable unity in Pushkin’s poetry. 93 (Transl. Z.I.)

Pushkin could only arrive at this radically new poetic approach thanks to his wide

experimentation with poetical forms:

The search for Russian poetry was led in the direction of precise, stylistically definite word. Not just harmony in general, but concrete harmony for every single thought, theme or emotion. It was Pushkin who discovered this kind of concrete harmony for the Russian poetry; he also created an infinite variety of harmonic verse forms, fitting for the most variegated types of semantic and emotional content.94. (Transl Z.I.)

Juxtaposing Pushkin’s translation method to that of his immediate predecessors,

Etkind shows that Pushkin had arrived at a radically new unity between form and content

precisely through his extensive activity of a translator of French, English, Italian and other

poetries. Thus Etkind comments on Pushkin’s translation from Prosper Mérimée:

Pushkin treats form differently. For Pushkin the form permeates content through and through: there cannot be anything neutral, interchangeable about it. The form is the content. For Pushkin the naked semantic content, which is deprived of form,turns out to be void, empty, and ultimately valueless. Pushkin aims at a poetic form in order to reconstruct precisely the imagined original, which hides behind the original French [prose] text…95 (Transl. Z.I.)

According to Etkind, Pushkin’s new aesthetic approach, which presupposes a more

unbreakable unity between form and content, cleared the way for a new concept of mimetic

poetry translation. The principles of mimetic translation set by Pushkin have remained the

main practice of Russian poetry translation to this day.

These principles were still in vigour when in 1919 the Acmeist poet Nikolai Gumilev,

Akhmatova’s first husband and Mandelstam’s friend, formulated his nine commandments of a

formal translation:

93 Ibid. p. 244. Original quote: «До Пушкина содержание и форма поэзии были в большей или меньшей степени разъединены, между ними образовывался некий зазор, приводивший к известной автономности элементов внешней формы; прежде всего это онтосится к метру, ритму, лексическому строю стихов. Только в ... творчестве Пушкина все без исключения внутренние и внешние элементы произведения оказались сведенными в систему, управляемую всевластными закономерностями. Смысл, стиль, звук . эти три компонента поэтического слова наконец-то, в поэзии Пушкина, образовывали нерасторжимое единство.» 94 Ibid, p. 153. Here is the original quote: «Поиски русской поэзии шли в направлении точного, стилистически определенного слова, гармонии не вообще, а гармонии конкретной для каждой данной мысли, темы, эмоции. Такую конкретную гармонию открыл для русской поэзии Пушкин, который создал бесконечное множество разнообразнейших гармонических форм стиха применительно к разнообразнейшим вариантам смыслового и эмоционального содержания.стр.». 95 Ibid., p. 222.

38

Let us recapitulate what has to be preserved in translation: 1) the number of lines; 2) verse metre; 3) rhyme pattern; 4) types of enjambments; 5) rhyme types; 6) linguistic register; 7) types of metaphor; 8) special devices; 9) changes of tone.96 (trans. Z.I.)

Brodsky, an heir to this school, was an ardent pupil of this concept of formal, or

mimetic, translation and would wholeheartedly subscribe to Gumilev’s declaration that: ‘…a

poet deserving of this title uses form as the only means to convey the spirit’.97

In fact, in his numerous translations into Russian from English, Polish, Greek, Italian,

Spanish and other languages (a more detailed reference to those translations can be found in

Chapter Five) Brodsky faithfully abide by the rules of mimetic translation. One of the main

reasons why Brodsky tried to preserve the form of the translated original was both his desire

to pay homage to the foreign tradition as well as the idea of an avid cultural exploration,

which had its antecedent in the early translations of Pushkin.98 At the same time, as is also

suggested by Gordin, all of Brodsky’s translations into Russian display the strong imprint of

his poetic persona:

Poets who are intensely individualistic are not capable of producing translations in the strict sense of the word: […] the world of Brodsky’s translations – I am speaking of the most characteristic examples – does not run parallel to the world of his poetry but rather becomes an intrinsic part of this latter world. 99 (Transl. Z.I.)

In fact when one reads Donne or Marvell translated by Brodsky into Russian one often

has the impression of reading Brodsky’s own poetry.

To his self-translations or reworkings of translations by others into English Brodsky,

as we said before, applied the same rigors of the mimetic principle of translation he had

inherited from Pushkin as well as other subsequent Russian poetry translators.. The effects of

his self-translations into English were, however, different: one can perceive in these

translations a very strong foreign element, for which Brodsky was frequently criticized.

96 Nikolai Gumilev. ‚Perevody stikhotvornye’ [Poetic translations], Printsypi khudozhestvennogo perevoda [Principles of artistic translation] (Petersburg: ‘Vsemirnaya Literatura’, 1919) p. 30. Original quotation runs as follows: «Повторим же вкратце, что обязательно соблюдать: 1) число строк, 2) метр и размер, 3) чередование рифм, 4) характер enjambement, 5) характер рифм, 6) характер словаря, 7) тип сравнений, 8) особые приемы, 9) переходы тона.» 97 Gumilev. ‚Perevody stikhotvornye’, p. 25. Original quote: «...поэт, достойный этого имени, пользуется именно формой, как единственным средством выразить дух.» 98 See also Iakov Gordin, „Nashe delo – pochti antropologicheskoe“ [Our task is almost anthropological]: ‚Introductory Note’ to Iosif Brodskii, V ozhidanii varvarov: Mirovaia poeziia v perevodakh Iosifa Brodskogo [Waiting for the Barbarians: World Poetry in translations of Joseph Brodsky], (St. Petersburg: Zvezda Magazine, 2001), p. 7. 99 Ibid., p. 8. Here is the original quote: «Поэты такой яростно интенсивной индивидуальности не могут создавать переводы в точном смысле слова. [...] мир переводов Бродского – в главных своих образцах – не просто плотно сопределен миру его поэзии, но является его органичной частью.»

39

Paradoxically enough, the theoretical findings of someone who can be regarded a

vociferous critic of a translation of mimesis and adaptation seem to provide if not the raison

d’être, but at least a justification for some of the idiosyncrasies of the English Brodsky.100 It is

Walter Benjamin, who will offer a theoretical template for approaching the rationale of

Brodsky’s translation practice.

Walter Benjamin and his translation theory

It seems that despite his vast erudition, Brodsky was not familiar with Benjamin’s

theory of translation. Even if he was, it did not have any significant impact on his views. And

yet, paradoxically enough, despite the differences on the level of theory between Benjamin

and Brodsky, the latter’s practice of translation into English overlap with some of the former’s

theory. In fact some of Brodsky’s translation decisions – a frequent source of controversy in

the English speaking world – might be considered as direct implementations of several of

Benjamin’s theoretical postulates and arguably might even serve as illustrations of their

viability.

In her introduction to a collection of Benjamin’s essays Hannah Arendt wrote that

Benjamin was neither a full-fledged translator nor a poet, or even a critic in the strict sense of

the word:

… he was a born writer, but his greatest ambition was to produce a work consisting entirely of quotations; he was the first German to translate Proust … and St.-John Perse, and before he had translated Baudelaire’s Tableaux parisiens, but he was no translator; he reviewed books and wrote a number of essays on living and dead writers, but he was no literary critic; … … I shall try to show that he thought poetically, but he was neither a poet nor a philosopher.101

And yet, his essay “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” published in 1923 and originally

devised by Walter Benjamin as a Preface to his German translation of Charles Baudelaire,

Tableaux parisiens has attained a special status in the history of translation theory.

In his memoir Walter Benjamin – die Geschichte einer Freundschaft Gerschom

100 Walter Benjamin referred to mimetic translation in quite negatie terms in his “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” as „eine ungenaue Übermittlung eines unwesentlichen Inhalts”. Quoted from Walter Benjamin. “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, Sprache und Geschichte: philosophische Essays. Ed. Rolf Tiedemann. (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1992) p. 50. 101 Hannah Arendt. Introduction to Walter Benjamin. Illuminations/essays and reflections. H. Arendt (ed.), (New York: Schocken Books, 1969) p. 4.

40

Scholem describes how at the time of its first publication Benjamin’s essay on translation met

with complete silence and brought its author a reputation for unintelligibility:

Bald nach meiner Auswanderung erschien der Band seiner Baudelaire-Übersetzungen, dessen Vorwort Über die Aufgabe des Übersetzers einen Höhepunkt seiner offen theologisch orientierten Periode in der Sprachphilosophie bildet. Er legte auf diese Seiten besonders großen Wert und sah darin etwas wie sein Credo – das freilich all die Ingredienzien enthielt, die seinem Schrifttum den Ruf der Unverständlichkeit verschafften.102

The situation has considerably changed since then, particularly due to the ongoing rise

in Benjamin’s posthumous post-WWII popularity. Several critical works dedicated both to

Benjamin’s theory of language as well as of translation have emerged;103 “Die Aufgabe des

Übersetzers” has long since become a pivotal text in the theory of poetry translation.

Valuable as these works are, none of them, however, diminishes in a decisive way the

level of the original obscurity of “Über die Aufgabe des Übersetzers” – an essay, which, as it

can be seen from the quote above, even Benjamin’s closest friend Scholem admitted to be

wonderfully unintelligible. Carol Jacobs in her famous essay on “Die Aufgabe des

Übersetzers” even seems to suggest that the obscurity of the text was deliberate on the part of

Benjamin. 104

Interestingly enough, it seems that Benjamin’s essay on the task of the translator

illustrates through its form one of the main aspects of the poetry itself: its untranslatability.

For, as suggested by Mandelstam, one of the hallmarks of poetry is that it defies paraphrase:

“…paraphrasing, … to my mind is surely a sign of non-poetry. For where there is amenability

to paraphrase, there the sheets have never been rumpled, there poetry, so to speak, has never

spent the night.”105 By the same token, if Benjamin’s text says something, as it definitely does

– as a matter of fact it says things which no other text does – it is still remarkably difficult to

102 Gerschom Scholem. Walter Benjamin: Geschichte einer Freundschaft. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1975) p. 153. 103 See for instance Carol Jacobs. ‘The Monstrosity of Translation’, MLN, Vol. 90, No. 6, Comparative Literature: Translation: Theory and Practice, (Dec., 1975), pp. 755-766; Paul de Man, ‘Resistance to Theory,’ Critical Writings, 1953-1978. (Minneapolis: University of Minnessota Press, 1985); Winfried Menninghaus, Walter Benjamins Theorie der Sprachmagie. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980); Maria Luisa Bachis. Walter Benjamin: linguaggio, traduzione, tradizione. (Firenze: Atheneum, 2000). 104 See also Carol Jacobs, ‘The Monstrosity of Translation’, p. 755. 105 Quoted from Osip Mandelstam. „Conversation about Dante“, The complete critical prose and letters. (Ann Arbor: Michigan, 1979) p. 397. Original quote: “… на мой взгляд, вернейший признак отсутствия поэзии … там, где обнаружена соизмеримость вещи с пересказом, там простыни не смяты, там поэзия, так сказать, не ночевала.” Quoted from: Осип Мандельштам. «Разговор о Данте». Сочинения в двух томах. Том 2, проза. (Тула: «Филин», 1994) стр. 221.

41

summarise. As it seems unthinkable to quote it here in full or to represent all the twists of

Benjamin’s thought in a linear sequence, I shall try to move by the main salient points.

A good part of Benjamin’s essay is dedicated to redefining the relationship between a

translation and the original.

First of all, it is important to point out that it is not just any kind of original that

Benjamin has in mind. He mainly concentrates on the translation of not only great, but an

even more limited category of famous works of art – „die grossen Kunstwerke“ – as he calls

them. What is valid for such works of art is that they have to have achieved certain fame prior

to their translation. In such cases translation represents a stage of their continued life:

Die Geschichte der großen Kunstwerke kennt ihre Deszendenz aus den Quellen, ihre Gestaltung im Zeitalter des Künstlers und die Periode ihres grundsätzlich ewigen Fortlebens bei den nachfolgenden Generationen. Dieses letzte heißt, wo es zutage tritt, Ruhm.106

Departing from this premise, Benjamin restores the hierarchy between the original and

the translation, in favour of the former. This hierarchy of subordination of translation to the

original had been notoriously shattered by Benjamin’s Romantik predecessors:

Noch stärker als bei August Wilhelm Schlegel, der, über Schleiermacher hinausgehend, die poetische Übersetzung immerhin als Neuschöpfung charakterisierte und so der entsagungsvollen Aufgabe des Übersetzers selbstbewußtere Akzente verlieh, tritt die Bedeutung der Subordination unter das Original bei Novalis in den Hintergrund.107

In fact as suggested by Huyssen, this shift in perception of translation as a completely

new creation led to the widespread belief among the Frühromantiker that: “Shakespeare sei

dank Schlegels Übersetzung ein deutscher Autor geworden und werde in Deutschland besser

and gründlicher verstanden als in seiner Heimat.“108 Benjamin rejects these ideas of an ideal

adaptation claiming that translations far from replacing the originals, actually owe them their

existence:

Übersetzungen, die mehr als Vermittlungen sind, entstehen, wenn im Fortleben ein Werk das Zeitalter seines Ruhmes erreicht hat. Sie dienen daher nicht sowohl diesem, wie schlechte Übersetzer es für ihre Arbeit zu beanspruchen pflegen, als dass sie ihm

106 Ibid. pp. 52-53. 107 Andreas Huyssen, Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung; Studien zur frühromanischen Utopie e. deutschen Weltliteratur, (Zürich: Atlantis Verlag, 1969) p. 127. 108 Andreas Huyssen, Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung; Studien zur frühromanischen Utopie e. deutschen Weltliteratur, Ausgabe: [Teildr.] Umfang: 24 S. (Schlieren: Maier, 1969), p. 9.

42

ihr Dasein verdanken. In ihnen erreicht das Leben des Originals seine stets erneute späteste und umfassendste Entfaltung.109

As will be seen later, the idea of the priority of the original over the translation is

echoed in Brodsky’s concept of a translator’s responsibility before the author of the original.

Brodsky reiterated this concept several times in his theoretical pronouncements on the

occasion of his reviews of the translations of Mandelstam and Akhmatova into English as

well as in his communication with his co-translator Weissbort (see Chapter Six).

If anything is certain about Benjamin’s position on translation it is that he is a sworn

opponent of the practice of adaptation and hence also of a mimetic translation. (Thus also

Carol Jacobs: “For Benjamin, translation does not transform a foreign language into one we

may call our own, but rather renders radically foreign that language we believe to be ours.”110)

However, if merely for polemical reasons, Benjamin admits that the mimetic theory of

translation might after all be right in insisting that both the form and the meaning of the

original be conveyed as accurately as possible:

… [das] innerste Verhältnis der Sprachen ist … das einer eigentümlichen Konvergenz. Es besteht darin, dass die Sprachen einander nicht fremd, sondern a priori und von allen historischen Beziehungen abgesehen einander in dem verwandt sind, was sie sagen wollen.

Mit diesem Erklärungsversuch scheint allerdings die Bertrachtung auf vergeblichen Umwegen wieder in die herkoemmliche Theorie der Übersetzung einzumünden. Wenn in den Übersetzungen die Verwandtschaft der Sprachen sich zu bewähren hat, wie könnte sie das anders als indem jene Form und Sinn des Originals möglichst genau übermittelt?111

As is evident from the quote above, Benjamin made this admission merely for

polemical reasons, only to attack the traditional theory. The first of Benjamin’s critiques of

the traditional theory is that it actually had not been able to provide any viable criteria to

measure the accuracy of the rendition of both form and meaning: “Über den Begriff dieser

Genauigkeit wüsste sich jene Theorie freilich nicht zu fassen, könnte also zuletzt doch keine

Rechenschaft von dem geben, was an Übersetzungen wesentlich ist.”112 This did not surprise

Benjamin, for not only did he believe it was not possible to genuinely grasp the relationship

between original and translation, but even more paradoxically, he maintained, that any

109 Benjamin. “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, p. 53. 110 Jacobs, ‘The Monstrosity of Translation’, p. 756. 111 Benjamin. “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, pp. 53-54. 112 Ibid. p. 54

43

translation would be completely impossible if in its ultimate essence it strove for likeness with

the original: “… [es] ist … erweisbar, dass keine Uebersetzung möglich wäre, wenn sie

Ähnlichkeiten mit dem Original ihrem letzten Wesen nach anstreben würde.”113 There are,

according to Benjamin, essentially two reasons for this: first, translation is a phenomenon

related not so much to the life, as to the afterlife of the original (“So wie die Äußerungen des

Lebens innigst mit dem Lebendigen zusammenhängen, ohne ihm etwas zu bedeuten, geht die

Uebersetzung aus dem Original hervor. Zwar nicht aus seinem Leben so sehr denn aus seinem

“Ueberleben”114); and second, translation is a different form altogether and the task of a

translator is distinct from the task of a poet.

What Benjamin proposes instead is literalness in translation. To illustrate the

appropriateness of the demand for literalness Benjamin resorts to the metaphor of the

vessel115:

…jene Forderung, deren Recht auf der Hand, deren Grund sehr verborgen liegt, [muss] aus triftigeren Zusammenhängen verstanden werden. Wie nämlich Scherben eines Gefäßes, um sich zusammenfügen zu lassen, in den kleinsten Einzelheiten einander zu folgen, doch nicht so zu gleichen haben, so muss, anstatt dem Sinn des Originals sich ähnlich zu machen, die Übersetzung liebend vielmehr und bis ins Einzelne hinein dessen Art des Meinens in der eigenen Sprache sich anbilden, um so beide wie Scherben als Bruchstück eines Gefäßes, als Bruchstück einer größeren Sprache erkennbar zu machen.116

Benjamin, following Rudolph Pannwitz, exemplified a translation in which the

translator would break through the barriers of his own language for the sake of the ‘pure

language.’ This he stated in the concluding words of his essay:

Wo der Text unmittelbar, ohne vermittelnden Sinn, in seiner Wörtlichkeit der wahren Sprache … angehört, ist er übersetzbar schlechthin. … Denn in irgendeinem Grade enthalten alle großen Schriften, im höchsten aber die heiligen, zwischen den Zeilen ihre virtuelle Übersetzung. Die Interlinearversion des heiligen Textes ist das Urbild oder Ideal aller Übersetzung.117

Benjamin’s call for literalness, along with his suggestion that Bible’s literal translation

is the model for a perfect translation, makes him fall into the first of the two principal

categories at the core of the translation theory (“vermeintlich ausschließenden Auffassungen

113 Ibid. p. 54. 114 Ibid. p. 52. 115 Compare Brodsky’s vessel-metaphor for the relationship of form and content in poetry translation: “Break the vessel, and the liquid will leak out“, In the Introduction to the present doctoral thesis. 116 Benjamin. “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, p. 60. 117 Benjamin, “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, p. 64.

44

vom wörtlichen und vom sinngemäßen Übersetzen”, in Huyssen’s words), namely that of the

literal translation.

At the same time “Faszination des Fremden” is peculiar to Benjamin to the same

degree as to his early Romantic predecessors. The important difference is, however, that

Benjamin draws diametrically opposite conclusions regarding the adaptation of the

foreignness. Benjamin quotes Rudolf Pannwitz, in whom he had found the true formulation of

an ideal goal of translation:

…unsre Übertragungen auch die besten gehn von einem falschen grundsatz aus sie wollen das indische griechische englische verdeutschen anstatt das deutsche zu verindischen vergriechischen verenglischen. sie haben eine viel bedeutendere ehrfurcht vor den eigenen sprachgebräuchen als vor dem geiste des fremden werks…118

Benjamin prescribes Pannwitz’s motto as the model for translation: “[der Übersetzer]

muss seine sprache durch die fremde erweitern and vertiefen man hat keinen begriff in

welchem masze das möglich ist”119.

Turning once again to Brodsky, we can say that his self-translations, as well as the

reworkings of translations done by others, with all their foreignising elements on the level of

rhythm, rhyme and enjambments fit perfectly the model proposed by Pannwitz and endorsed

by Benjamin. The major criticism addressed to Brodsky as a translator into English by his

native-speaking adversaries, was that he was seeking to expand the boundaries of the

language that was not his own. And yet, arguably, his foreignness gave Brodsky a

considerable advantage in breaking through these boundaries.

Heiner Weidmann has recently reminded us that “Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers”

published in 1923 was originally devised by Walter Benjamin as a Preface to a concrete

translation – the German translation of Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux parisiens:

1923 erschien Charles Baudelaire, Tableaux parisiens. Deutsche Übertragung mit einem Vorwrot über die Aufgabe des Übersetzers von Walter Benjamin. Seither ist die vorangestellte Sprach- und Übersetzungstheorie oft und genau gelesen worden, und nicht selten überzeugend als Theorie der Unübersetzbarkeit, so dass man inzwischen im vielversprechenden Tietel Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers auch die Resignation des Übersetzers, der aufgeben muß, mitliest, ohne dass man sich um die irritierende

118 Benjamin, “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, p. 63. 119 Rudoph Pannwitz, Quoted in Benjamin, “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, p. 63.

45

Tatsache, dass auf diesen Text wirkliche, einschätzbare Übersetzungen folgen, genügend gekümmert hat.120

As Benjamin’s own translation of Baudelaire shows, the demand for literalness was

not to be taken so ‘literally’121. Benjamin merely suggests that as the rendition of form

precludes the faithful rendition of the sense – (“Wie sehr die Treue in der Wiedergabe der

Form die des Sinnes erschwert, versteht sich von selbst. Demgemäß ist die Forderung der

Wörtlichkeit unableitbar aus dem Interesse der Erhaltung des Sinnes”122) – precedence should

be given to the rendition of form over the rendition of meaning. For the meaning has already

been taken care of in the original:

Eben darum muss sie von der Absicht, etwas mitzuteilen, vom Sinn in sehr hohem Masse absehen und das Original ist ihr in diesem nur insofern wesentlich, als es der Mühe und Ordnung des Mitzuteilenden den Übersetzer und sein Werk schon enthoben hat.123

The task of the translator should be different from that of the poet also because the

relationship between the form and the content in translation is different in translation from

that, which can be traced in the original. Benjamin explains yet again with the vessel-

metaphor:

… das Verhältnis des Gehalts zur Sprache [ist] völlig verschieden … in Original und Übersetzung. Bilden nämlich diese im ersten eine gewisse Einheit wie Frucht und Schale, so umgibt die Sprache der Übersetzung ihren Gehalt wie ein Königsmantel in weiten Falten.124

Thus the translator’s program should radically differ from that of original poet. The

translator should retain greater freedom from the constraints of having to reproduce the

meaning and should instead strive for the intention of the original:

…dem Sinn gegenüber [kann, ja muss] ihre Sprache sich gehen lassen, um nicht dessen intentio als Wiedergabe, sondern als Harmonie, als Ergänzung zur Sprache, in der diese sich mitteilt, ihre eigene Art der intentio ertönen zu lassen.125

Certainly Brodsky (who believed one had to preserve the meaning to the same extent

as the form in translation) would not agree with Benjamin’s idea that the demand to render the

120 See also Heiner Weidmann. „Wie Abgrunds Licht den Stürzenden beglücket“/ Zur Benjamins Baudelaire-Übersetzung, Christiaan L. Hart Nibbrig Ed. Übersetzen: Walter Benjamin. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001) p. 311. 121 See also Weidmann. „Wie Abgrunds Licht den Stürzenden beglücket“, pp. 312-322. 122 Benjamin, “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, p. 60. 123 Ibid., p. 61. 124 Ibid., p. 57. 125 Ibid., p. 61.

46

meaning is secondary in translation. The reason for this radical diversity lies in the fact that

Benjamin still operated to a large extent in the aesthetics of Symbolism, whose

representatives were notoriously opposed to the ideas of plain meaning and were striving

instead to find forms of expressing an ideal, pure meaning. Brodsky on the other hand, was an

heir of the Acmeist school, one of whose leaders, Osip Mandelstam wrote as early as in 1912

in his Acmeist manifesto:

… if one takes the sense as the content, everything else in the word must be regarded as a simple mechanical appendage that merely impedes the swift transmission of the thought. “The word as such” was born very slowly. Gradually, one after another, all the elements of the word were drawn into the concept of form. To this day the conscious sense, the Logos, is still taken erroneously and arbitrarily for the content. The Logos gains nothing from such an unnecessary honor. The Logos demands nothing more than to be considered on an equal footing with the other elements of the word. … The Futurists, unable to cope with the conscious sense as creative material, frivolously threw it overboard and essentially repeated the crude mistake of their predecessors. […] For the Acmeists the conscious sense of the word, the Logos, is just as magnificent a form as music is for the Symbolists.126

According to the Acmeist conception semantics represented a form in its own right.

Hence, if the form was to be preserved across translation, the same went for the semantics.

Neither for the Acmeists nor for Brodsky did there exist any rift between the two.

And yet despite this theoretical disagreement between Benjamin and Brodsky, the

conclusions which Benjamin drew from his premise (that the meaning can be discarded in

translation) were arguably very akin to those of Brodsky. Benjamin concludes namely that the

smoothness is rather unlikely to be the main feature of a good translation: “Es ist daher, vor

allem im Zeitalter ihrer Entstehung, das höchste Lob einer Übersetzung nicht, sich wie ein

Original ihrer Sprache zu lesen.”127 To this Brodsky would most eagerly subscribe, for it was

one of the distinctive ideas of both his translation theories and practices of translation from

Russian into English that translation should not read too ‘smoothly’. For instance in the

preface to the first edition of A Part of Speech Brodsky wrote that he had taken the liberty of

revising as his own translations already done by other native speakers to bring them, as he

believed, ‘closer to the original’, which was done ‘at the expense of their smoothness’. 128

“Smoothness”, as many of his co-translators attest, was Brodsky’s curse to brand bad

translations. It stood for that disastrous levelling which occurred in some English translations

126 Osip Mandelstam. „Morning of Acmeism“, The complete critical prose and letters. (Ann Arbor: Michigan, 1979) pp. 61-62. 127 Benjamin, “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, p. 61. 128 Quoted in: Brodsky, Collected poems in English, p. 507.

47

of Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak and other Russian poets. Those few critics

who were aware of this levelling acknowledged merits of Brodsky’s translations, which, if

nothing else, managed to convey the uniqueness of his poetic voice.

In his essay ‘Bryusov I bukvalizm’ [‘Bryusov and literalness’] 129 Mikhail Gasparov

showed that extreme literalness was the main characteristic of Bryusov’s translation of

Virgil’s Eneid undertaken in 1910’s. (Interestingly just a couple of years prior to that Bryusov

had produced an adapting translation of the Eneid). In Gasparov’s view this choice was not

just a crazy whim of a translator, but reflected a general trend in the European culture of the

beginning of the twentieth century. The refutation of the theory of progress brought forth a

theory of self-enclosed civilizations («самозамкнутых цивилизаций»), a theory which soon

after Oswald Spengler turned into a scientific doctrine.130 Therefore in the translations of that

period the task of the translator was to underscore the foreignness, the remoteness of the

translated text, which is especially manifested in the uncommonness of the foreign forms.

This explains the parallel calls for literalness coming from such different figures as Benjamin

and Bryusov respectively.

Brodsky came from a different epoch and did not programmatically try to foreignize

his translations. The foreignisation came about in Brodsky because he tried to preserve across

his translation those elements, which in his own eyes, reflected his uncommon poetic voice in

the originals such as verse meter, rhyme patterns and enjambments. It is precisely in this sense

that Brodsky’s self-translations manage to capture what Benjamin called the intentio of

language of the original.

Thus we can conclude that despite the large differences in theoretical background

between Benjamin and Brodsky, the latter’s translation practices in English might be said to

fulfil the translator’s task as it was understood and formulated by Benjamin:

Wie … die Übersetzung eine eigene Form ist, so lässt sich auch die Aufgabe des Übersetzers als eine eigene fassen und genau von der des Dichters unterscheiden. Sie besteht darin, diejenige Intention auf die Sprache, in die übersetzt wird, zu finden, von der aus in ihr das Echo des Originals erweckt wird.131

Having come full circle, we return to the passage from Huyssen quoted at the

beginning of this chapter. Brodsky’s principles of translation were originally those of the

129 Mikhail L. Gasparov. “Briusov i bukvalizm”, Poetika perevoda [Poetics of translation], (essays), (Moskva: Raduga, 1988), pp. 29-62. 130 Ibid. pp. 45-46. 131 Benjamin. “Die Augabe des Übersetzers”, p. 58.

48

mimetic translation pioneered by Pushkin and inherited by Brodsky via Acmeists. In his

translations from other languages into Russian, one can say that Brodsky’s translation is well

described by the notion of adaptation (as typified by Hyussen): “die Faszination des Fremden,

in das sich beim Übersetzen Eigenes mischt, und das erst in dieser Mischung voll und gültig

erkannt wird.“ 132 Brodsky’s translations of others still bore a strong imprint of his poetic

personality. In Russian his translations, although mimetic, remained unmistakably Brodskian.

My hypothesis is that the position of Brodsky’s self-translations into English was

different from that of his translations into Russian. Although in theory his underlying

principles remained those of mimetic translation, Brodsky translated into English mainly his

own poems and hence there was no mingling of somebody else’s foreign sensibility with that

of his own. On the other hand, Brodsky was aware, as no-one else, of the intentio, as defined

by Benjamin, of his every single line of his own verse. Hence in his self-translations into

English the uniqueness of the voice came with a trend towards greater literalness, as opposed

to the ‘smoothness’ of adapting translation, which aspires to be read as if it had been written

in the target language and inevitably obfuscates the unique voice of its author. The inevitable

effects of this greater literalness and greater insistence on the retention of form of the original

on the part of Brodsky the self-translator had inevitable foreignising effects on the end result.

Thus on the invisible scale between the two diametrically opposed approaches – the mimetic

one, practiced by Russian poets-translators from Pushkin onwards, and the literalistic – most

poetically defended by Benjamin – Brodsky’s self-translations must have gradually at least

slightly tilted towards the second.

132 Andreas Huyssen, Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung; Studien zur frühromanischen Utopie e. deutschen Weltliteratur, Ausgabe: [Teildr.] Umfang: 24 S. (Schlieren: Maier, 1969), p. 12.

49

Chapter 4: Theoretical standpoints and hypotheses: Viktor

Zhirmunsky

Brodsky, as was said earlier, insisted on the retention of form in translation. It is well

known, however, that there exist sharp contrasts between Russian and English in terms of

purely linguistic possibilities as well as in prosodic traditions with regard to the translation of

formal verse. To understand the precise nature of these contrasts and to see how these

contrasts were reflected in Brodsky’s self-translating experiments is indispensable to base the

analysis of Brodsky’s self-translations on a solid theoretical knowledge of prosodic theories,

both Russian and English. As Russia brought forth major breakthroughs in studies of metrical

theory in the twentieth century, it was not incidental that a certain prominence should be

given to the theoretical work of Viktor Zhirmunsky. (As Simon Karlinsky further suggests,

since the beginning of the 20th century Russian meter and versification ‘has been studied by

generations of poets and theoreticians far more thoroughly than [it was] ever done with

English verse.’133)

A systematic analysis of real rhythm in Russian verse as distinguished from abstract

metrical schemes was started in 1910 by Symbolist poet Andrei Bely and has continued in

recent decades through computerized and semiotic studies of metrics in the works of V.E.

Kholshevnikov, G.A. Shengeli, M.L. Gasparov, P.A. Rudnev etc. Its apex was reached,

however, as early as the 1920s when Viktor Zhirmunsky134 and Boris Tomashevsky135

developed a theory differentiating between the concepts of rhythm and metre: i.e. between ‘an

empirical reality of verse stresses and an abstract scheme of idealised verse metre.’(Transl.

Z.I.)136 As Iuri Lotman suggests, the works of these two theoreticians have not to this day lost

their actuality:

133 Simon Karlinsky. ‘Introduction’, Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940-1970 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), p. 17. 134 Viktor Zhirmunsky. Vvedenie v metriku. Teoria stikha. [Introduction to metrics. Verse theory] (Leningrad: Academia, 1925). 135 Boris Tomashevsky. Russkoye stikhoslozhenie: Metrika. [Russian versification: metrics] (Petrograd: Academia 1923); Boris Tomashevsky. O stikhe. [About verse] (Leningrad: Academia, 1929). 136 Iuri Lotman. O poetakh i poezii: analiz poeticheskogo teksta, stat’i i issledovaniya, zametki, retsenzii, vystupleniya. [On poets and poetry: analysis of poetical text, essays and researches, articles, reviews, lectures] (St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPB, 1996) p. 56. Original quote runs as follows: “ «...В.М. Жирмунский и Б.В. Томашевский разработали в начале 1920-х гг. теорию противопоставления ритма и метра – эмпирической реальности стиховых ударений и абстрактной схемы идеализованного поэтического размера.»

50

Die theoretischen, in den früheren Arbeiten von Viktor M. Zirmunskij and Boris V. Tomasevskij ausgesprochenen Thesen haben, ungeachtet der Korrekturen, welche später sowohl von ihren Urhebern selbst als auch von anderen Wissenschaftlern vorgenommen worden sind, ihre Bedeutung als leitendes wissenschaftliches Prinzip bewahrt.137

What distinguished Zhirmunsky’s book Introduction to Metrics: Verse Theory from

any other book by his colleagues, including that of Boris Tomashevsky, who concentrated

more on the exclusive studies of the Russian versification, is its exceptional comparative

approach. The editors of its English translation comment:

…Zirmunskij’s book has lost none of the exceptional qualities which made it stand out as one of the most solid contributions to the study of Russian versification a the time of its appearance….One of its chief merits is, in fact, the broad comparative framework, which reveals interesting convergences in the evolution of Russian, French, and German versification….The study of Zirmunskij shows … how intimately the structure of a poem is connected with the structure of a given language, and how inseparable is the link between poetics and linguistics.138

Following from the quotation above, the uniqueness of Zhirmunsky’s approach lies in

the fact that he studied the Russian metrical system by comparing it with versification systems

of other European languages: English, German and French. A great part of Zhirmunsky’s

work deals with the differences and similarities between metrical systems in these languages

in their application to the possibilities and strategies of formal translation from one into

another. this is precisely the quality of Zhirmunsky’s work which makes it particularly

suitable for both the explanation of the existence of translational contrasts between English

and Russian as well as the description of their precise nature with regard to Brodsky’s self-

translation.

My aim is to establish with the help of Zhirmunsky’s theory of translation and metrics

the extent, to which Brodsky succeeded in overcoming these hurdles in the practice of his

mimetic self-translation, or whether and when his translations stumbled, as some critics

believed, upon these contrasts so that his ‘Russian’ solutions did not work for English.

137 Jurij M. Lotman. Die Analyse des poetischen Textes. (Kronberg/ Ts.: Scriptor Verl., 1975) p. 67. The original quote runs as follows: «Теоретические положения, высказанные в ранних работах В.М. Жирмунского и Б.В. Томашевского, несмотря на некоторые уточнения, внесенные в дальнейшем как самими авторами, так и другими исследователями, сохранили своё значение ведущего научного принципа.» Quoted from Iuri Lotman. O poetakh i poezii, p. 56. 138 Viktor Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. transl. C.F. Brown. (The Hague: Mouton&Co., 1966) p.5.

51

The choice of Zhirmunsky’s work as the main theoretical basis for the present

dissertation is further justified by the fact that as a young poet Brodsky knew Zhirmunsky

personally, lived in his house and availed himself of Zhirmunsky’s library. There is therefore

good reason to believe, confirmed by the evidence of Brodsky’s own theoretical

pronouncements, that the poet was familiar with the works of this outstanding theoretician of

prosody.

Metre and rhythm

Brodsky’s critics often reproved the poet for introducing elements of Russian metrics

into English. This is, for example, how Donald Davie alleges the existence of this

phenomenon:

…anyone who has heard Brodsky read his poems first in Russian and then in English, [knows] that when he speaks of ‘strict metres’ he has failed to notice how Russian metres can be strict in a way no English metre can.139

Davie’s description above is far from being precise – like so many before and after

him, he confuses the notions of metre and rhythm. And yet Davie notices correctly the

existence of the phenomena which he nonetheless fails to describe. One of Brodsky

‘supporters’, Seamus Heaney, comes somewhat closer in his description. In the quote below,

Heaney suggests that the Russian and English ears have different expectations and that despite

Brodsky’s oft-proclaimed love for the English language, in his self-translations it is the

prosody of Russian that ‘sets the rules’, i.e. introduces elements on the level of stress and of

rhythm into translation which seem problematic to the English ear:

… in spite of his [Brodsky’s] manifest love for English verse, which amounts almost to a possessiveness, the dynamo of Russian supplies the energy, the metrics of the original will not be gainsaid and the English ear comes up against a phonetic element that is both animated and skewed. Sometimes instinctively rebels at having its expectations denied in terms of both syntax and velleities of stress. Or it panics and wonders if it is being taken for a ride when it had expected a rhythm. At other times, however, it yields with that unbounded assent that only the most triumphant art can conjure and allow.140

139 Davie. ‘The saturated line,’ pp. 14-15. 140 Heaney. ‘Brodsky’s Nobel: What the Applause Was All About’, p. 18.

52

Having described in his own words the ‘Russianising’ effects of Brodsky’s

translations, Heaney, as opposed to Davie, still maintains that by some sort of ‘conjuring’

Brodsky manages to make these self-translations work in English.

Basing the analysis on the prosodic theory of Zhirmunsky, it becomes possible to

explain the phenomenon referred to by both Davie and Heaney in more accurate and precise

technical terms. As suggested by Zhirmunsky, verse written in identical verse metre in two

different languages is bound to display different rhythmical realisations. Following

Zhirmunsky’s theory, an analysis of Brodsky’s self-translating materials reveals that their

‘foreignising’ effect arises from the fact that, in translating himself, the poet tried to reproduce

not the poems’ metre, but their rhythm. Significantly, Zhirmunsky was the first theorist of

prosody to introduce an explicit distinction between the frequently confused concepts of

metre and rhythm.

Zhirmunsky shows that all the modern European nations inherit the term “metrics,” as

most of the terminology which describes form in poetry, from the Ancient Greeks and

Romans. Ancient system of versification was based on a regular alternation of long and short

syllables, i.e. on the principle of quantity. In modern languages, the distinction of quantity in

its application to verse has been lost; instead the alteration of long and short syllables of

classical meters has been replaced by the distinction in quality – the sequence of stressed and

unstressed syllables.141 (Auden confirms that: ‘…quantitative unrhymed verse and qualitative

rhymed verse have nothing in common except that they are both rhythmical patterns.’142

According to Zhirmunsky, during the adoption of the classical metrical system into modern

English, German, Italian and French, there occurred a ‚metrical resistance.’ In consequence,

the rhythm of verse written in these languages is the result of a compromise between the

natural properties of each language and the alien metrical system ‘imposed’ on them.

Zhirmunsky’s crucial discovery is that every language adapts to the imposed metrical scheme

differently:

Since the syllabo-tonic system, which developed as a peculiar attempt to reproduce the classical feet, imports into a national versification system its own alien rules prescribing a strict alteration of syllables and stresses, it invariably encounters

141 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. pp. 27-29. 142 Auden. Forewords And Afterwords, p. 5.

53

resistance from the linguistic material, a resistance which will vary in accordance with the different phonetic characteristics of each language. 143

Because all prosodic terminology in the modern European languages is borrowed from

Latin, there exists a long historical confusion among prosodists between the concepts of metre

and rhyme. In Latin notably there is no such distinction: the composition of verse in Latin

follows a strict metrical pattern and the distribution of long and short syllables is a fixed

matter. (As pointed out by Saintsbury in his famous Historical Manual of English Prosody,

the ‘majority of English poets, from at least the sixteenth century, if not earlier, until far into

the nineteenth, had actually composed [verses in Latin] and even more had learnt the rules of

them, long before attempting in English the work which has given them their fame.’144).

Zhirmunsky shows by examples of verse in other European languages that each of these

languages allows its own variations within the prescribed pattern due to the natural resistance

of the languages, and that it depends on the skills of every individual poet how well he can

use the possibilities of those variations peculiar to his language.145

For the first time in the history of European metrical studies Zhirmunsky introduces a

clear-cut distinction between the conceptions of metre and rhyme (See more in Chapter Six).

On the basis of this distinction it becomes possible to observe, among other things, the exact

prosodic differences between verse written in the same verse metre in English and Russian.

Taking as an example the iambic pentameter in English and Russian, Zhirmunsky shows that

although the applied general principle of distribution of strong and weak syllables may be the

same, there are necessarily differences in the concrete realizations which depend directly on

the natural phonetic properties of the respective languages, in this particular case of English

and Russian. The contrasting characteristic of the iambic verse in polysyllabic Russian with

monosyllabic English is that in Russian, iambs present omissions of stress in the positions

prescribed to be stressed according to the metrical pattern of the poem, whereas in English

they display the opposite picture of additional accents or ‘hypermetrical’ stresses:

Within metrically identical … iambic verse, Russian iambs display omissions of metrical stresses (a medium of three stresses in an iambic tetrameter) which is due to a greater word length in the Russian language. English iambs on the other hand, because of the respective shortness of the words (predominantly monosyllables), display frequent additional stresses of the metrically weak syllables. 146

143 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. p. 80. 144 George Saintsbury. Historical Manual of English Prosody (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1930) p. 3. 145 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. pp. 21-22. 146 Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory] p. 237

54

The application of the distinction between the concepts of metre and rhythm to the

examination of the prosodic examples in such dissimilar languages as English and Russian

enabled Zhirmunsky to trace the exact variations occurring in verse with the same metrical

pattern in these languages. As the quotation above makes clear, a pentametric line in Russian

will normally contain omissions of stress or ‘pyrrhics’; an average English pentametric line

displays, on the other hand, additional, hypermetrical stresses which are natural consequences

of the monosyllabic nature of English.147

With the help of Zhirmunsky’s metre-rhythm distinction, it becomes clear that what

Brodsky was often trying to convey in translating his poems was not their metre – as the poet

himself maintained in his numerous pronouncements – but their rhythm. This rhythm which

Brodsky in fact attempted to preserve is to a great degree equivalent to the rhythm of his

original poems, and possesses characteristics typical of Russian verse: it often contains

omissions of stress, or ‘Phyrric feet. As the result, a conflict with English acoustic habits is

unavoidable.

This conflict is increasingly clear from the recordings of his readings of his verse first

in Russian and then in the translated English available at the Sound Division of the Library of

Congress in Washington D.C. As becomes evident from listening to these recordings,

Brodsky often omits stresses on the semantically loaded words while reading translations of

his verse in English – usage which must have rendered certain parts of his verse unintelligible

for listeners native to English. This discord may partly explain the accusations of the ‘un-

Englishness’ of his self-translations expressed by both his opponents as well as some of his

supporters.

‘Metrical task’: variety of elements of metrical organization.

‘Simultaneity of assonances’

Side by side with these instances of the ‘un-Englishness’ [in] Brodsky’s self-

translations, some observed the co-existence of the opposite phenomenon. Derek Walcott, for

example, speaks of ‘simultaneity of assonances’148 which Brodsky often reached in his self-

147 See also Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. p. 80. 148 Walcott. ‘Magic Industry’, p. 2.

55

translations to an astonishing degree. Walcott illustrates this quality with the example of two

lines from Brodsky’s self-translation of the poem ‘Roman Elegies’:

The month of stalled pendulums. Only a fly in August in a dry carafe’s throat is droning its busy hymn. [As a self-translator, Brodsky] is quite unpredictably, a phenomenon. One might sneer and say ‘no, a curiosity,’ but if we examine the two lines above, with the detail they deserve, the curiosity surrenders to admiration for a genius that supersedes geography, that repeatedly … creates great verse in two languages. It is all there in the hiss, the sonarscopic detail. The progress, letter by letter, sound breeding the next sound, is a progress of neutrality.149 The somnolence that is underlined by the insect’s industry, the buzz contained in the sounds ‘busy’ and ‘its’, the distorted echo of ‘hymn’ from pendulums’, the effort required from the very beginning of the line to extend ‘the’ into ‘month’, all of which, magisterially, and in an adopted language, establish torpor. And now one wonders if the original Russian is as rich in its consonantal sibilance as Brodsky’s English, and not the other way around.150

In the quote above Walcott suggests that Brodsky’s self-translations deserve a right

degree of detailed attention, alluding to the wholesale accusations that Brodsky’s self-

translations had by that time received from critics. Upon a close analysis, Walcott believes, it

is not difficult to detect Brodsky’s rare ability to create in English connections between

meaning and sound which would honour even a native poet.

Along the same lines, Daniel Weissbort refers to Brodsky as having perhaps ‘too much

ear’ in English, as opposed to him having none at all, as claimed by his adversaries.

Weissbort, who according to his own confession had naively wished to ‘correct’ some of

Brodsky’s self-translations, stumbled against the same phenomenon:

This highly intellectual poet [Brodsky] was also working at a level almost of pure sound and movement. I was made more keenly aware of this when I tried, experimentally, to ‘correct’ one or two of his self-translations. Since his command of English grammar and idiom was not always what one would have wished, I wondered if it might not be possible discreetly to ‘fix’ his versions. I discovered that they couldn’t be altered without seriously damaging the sound structure. It is arguable that far from not having an ‘ear’ in English, Brodsky, in fact, had too much ear!151

149 Derek Walcott, ‘Unpublished draft of the essay ‘Magic Industry’, Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 53 Fld 12, pp. 1-2. 150 Idem 151 Daniel Weissbort. ‚Something like his own language’, URL http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr14/reviews/weissbort.html accessed 18 Jun. 07.

56

Trying to ‘fix’ the translations, Weissbort realized that their syntactic, semantic and

prosodic strata were bound in a union comparable only to that which existed in the originals.

On the basis of our analysis on Zhirmunsky’s explanation of the phenomenon of the

metrical task, it becomes possible to account for the existence of such contrasting opinions of

Brodsky as a self-translator with no ‘ear’ in English on the one hand, and on the other hand,

with ‘too much’ of it. According to Zhirmunsky, at the moment of composition all the

elements – semantic, acoustic and syntactic – are subject to a single metrical law:

Word masses are material which the poet subdues to a formal task introducing regularity and proportion in the distribution of various parts. The artist confronts as it were a chaos of individual, complex and contrasting facts of meaning, of sound and of syntax; the poet introduces into this chaos an artistic symmetry, regularity and organization: all the disparate, individual facts are subjugated to the unity of the artistic task.152

This main metrical impulse or law – which in reality one imagines to be a sort of

rhythmical hum which the poet hears in his ear at the moment of composition – carries away

all the aspects of the artistic speech conveying some graciousness and structural harmony to a

formless chaotic material. Here Brodsky describes the same in his own terms:

…The poem always starts with the first line or with a line anyway. And from that you go. It is something in the line, a certain hum to which you try to fit the line. And then you proceed that way…. It is some tune which has oddly enough some sort of psychological weight or denomination. And you try to fit something into that….153

The same idea is echoed by Iuri Lotman in his famous book on the analysis of poetic

texts:

Der Rhytmus ist im Vers ein bedeutungsdifferenzierendes Element, wobei der bedeutungsdifferenzierende Charakter, wenn er die rhythmische Struktur erfaßt, auch diejenigen Elemente der Sprache ergreift, die ihn im normalen Sprachgebrauch nicht aufweisen.154

As we see, both theoreticians Zhirmunsky and Lotman as well as the poet Brodsky

himself agree in their understanding of rhythm as the main compositional principle: the real

152 Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory], p. 436. Original text: «Перед художником – как бы хаос индивидуальных, сложных и противоречивых фактов, смысловых (тематических), звуковых, синтаксических, в который вносится художественная симметрия, закономерность, организованность: все отдельные, индивидуальные факты подчиняются единству художественного задания». 153 Joseph Brodsky. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations. Cynthia Haven (ed.), (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002) p.149. 154 Jurij M. Lotman. Die Analyse des poetischen Textes. p. 65. The original quote runs as follows: «Ритм в стихе является смыслоразличающим элементом, причём, входя в ритмическую структуру, смыслоразличительный характер приобретают и те языковые элементы, которые в обычном употреблении его не имеют.» Iuri Lotman, O poetakh i poezii, p. 55.

57

rhythm of the poem exerts its organizing influence on the ‚lexical material’ of the poem at the

phonetic, semantic and syntactic levels simultaneously.

In my metrical analysis of the concrete translational materials – various drafts,

revisions, commentaries, interlinear translations etc. – I will depart from Zhirmunsky’s theory

of ‘metrical task.’ I will attempt to demonstrate instead that while Brodsky seemed to start

revising the translations of his poems in English with the same initial ‘hum’ of his originals,

i.e. from rhythmical patterns with distinctly Russian characteristics, this initial metrical

impulse was ultimately dominated by the requirements of the linguistic material of the target

language, English.

Rhymes

As has been pointed out by many critics, ‘the rhymes provide one of the structural

cornerstones in many of Brodsky’s poems.’155 Thus Susan Sontag remarks that, ‘Poetry, he

[Brodsky] said, is accelerated thinking. It was his best argument… for he considered rhyme

essential to this process.’156 In a discussion with his friend and fellow poet Derek Walcott,

Brodsky, who once referred to himself with pride as a ‘pretty good rhymer’157 confirmed and

expanded on Sontag’s observation:

… composing poetry is a very peculiar process. It is indeed a process of cognition. … When you rhyme two things which have not been paired before, a certain relationship develops between them. Suppose the line ends with the word “moon”. So you start to shop in the language for a rhyme, or a correspondence, and sooner or later you come up with the word “spoon”. And initially you think it won’t do, because there is apparently no connection between the moon and the spoon. But when you begin to think. And you think: isn’t there? Perhaps there is. First both are inanimate; both have that metallic shine. Etc., etc. And you connect them. And that connection accelerates tremendously. And it helps you to understand something about the nature of things, the nature of the moon, and the nature of the spoon. And perhaps the nature of the relationship of two things.158

Rhyme was thus for Brodsky not only a device of metrical composition, but also a

means of accelerated thinking. As Sontag points out, this idea of mental acceleration is the

key to Brodsky’s great poetic achievement. In fact, according to Sontag, Brodsky insisted that

155 Barry P. Scherr. ‚To Urania’ in Lev Loseff and Valentina Polukhina. Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem. (New York: Palgrave, 1999) p. 94. 156 Sontag. ‚Joseph Brodsky’, in Where the Stress Falls, p. 332. 157 Brodsky, Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, p. 161. 158 ‘The Power of Poetry’: The two Nobel Prize winners Joseph Brodsky (1987) and Derek Walcott (1992) met

at the Gothenburg Book Fair on 9 September 1993, Library of Congress, Sound Division.

58

‘poetry’s “job” (a much-used word) was to explore the capacity of language to travel farther,

faster.’159 That is why the constant search for new and more exacting rhymes was as central to

Brodsky’s self-translations into English as it was crucial to the composition of his original

verse in Russian. As I will try to show in my analysis of the single translations, this [search]

produced marvellous results: some of Brodsky’s rhymes in English are authentic tours de

force. In addition, Brodsky’s rhymes display metaphysical wit and often work as independent

puns in English. In this particular respect Brodsky’s self-translations defy the main premise of

poetry’s untranslatability as it was formulated by Roman Jakobson: ‘The pun, or to use a

more erudite, and perhaps more precise term – paronomasia, reigns over poetic art, and

whether its rule is absolute or limited, poetry by definition is untranslatable.’160

I will try to show that the property of Brodsky’s self-translations to produce authentic

euphonic-semantic bonds in English on the level of assonance and rhymes allows them to

acquire a new independent status in the language: in the same way as the originals, they

cannot be simply altered without destroying their connection between form and content, or

using Dante’s words, without ‘breaking all of’ their ‘sweetness and harmony.’161

In the Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine I will try to attest to this hypothesis on the basis

of concrete textual examples.

Having established the importance of the rhymes as the main compositional principle

in Brodsky’s poetry, one cannot, however, neglect the fact that the poet’s efforts in rendering

them across translation met with considerable autochthonous resistance.

First of all there is a sharp contrast with the general trends in English-language poetry:

towards the end of the twentieth century Brodsky’s endeavour to rhyme exactingly seemed to

be, in English-speaking literary circles completely démodé, to say the least. To this can be

added the general Anglo-Russian prosodic contrasts indicated by Zhirmunsky: the use of

feminine or even dactylic rhymes, let alone the regular alternation of masculine and feminine

rhymes (typical for Russian verse) is not only much less usual for English162, but also

159 Sontag. ‘Joseph Brodsky’, p. 332. 160 Roman Jakobson. ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, in On Translation, Reuben Brower (ed.) (Camridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959) p. 238. 161 Dante‚’Il Convivio’, Le Opere di Dante, p. 155. 162 ‘…[in English poetry] there never appeared anything like the French system of masculine and feminine alternation.’ Quoted from George Saintsbury. A History of English Prosody: from the twelfth century to the present day. (New York: Russell & Russell, [1911], 1963) p. 538.

59

produces in it some quite different connotations. 163 Walcott supports the same idea when

speaking of Brodsky’s translations:

The translated Russian risks, in its usually hexametrical rhyming design, a meter which English associates with the comic, the parodic, or the ironic. There is no modern English or American poet who will take such risks – being utterly serious with feminine endings, of attempting to reach the sublime and noble without the pseudo-humility of the dying fall, the retractable conceit.164

Anthony Hecht confirms the presence of the same phenomenon in Brodsky’s poems

composed directly in English:

Two-syllable rhymes, favoured in some poems Brodsky composed in English (Persia/inertia, Noah/ spermatozoa) have struck the ears of some English readers as perilously frivolous, though such disyllabic chiming is easily available in the Russian language, and employed by Pushkin and other great poets.165

Basing my analysis on Zhirmunsky’s verse theory and analyzing the translations of

two poems Brodsky wrote in loose dolnik, the predominant verse metre of his later period, I

found at least one reason to explain why Brodsky might have disregarded his friends’

admonitions and continued to introduce feminine rhymes into his English self-translations.

Rhyme: a phenomenon of rhythm

Iuri Lotman identifies Zhirmunsky, who laid the foundations for modern rhyme

theory, as the first to suggest rhyme’s importance as a phenomenon of rhythm. As early as

1923 Zhirmunsky perceived rhyme as a quality pertaining to rhythm rather than a mere sound

repetition.166 Zhirmunsky wrote: ‘…to the phenomenon of rhyme we have to attribute every

sound repetition which has an organising role in the metrical composition of a poem.’167

Zhirmunsky’s discovery had a special repercussion when applied to the analysis of

verse written in accentual verse or dolnik. Zhirmunsky shows that in such verse, rhymes are

the main metrical device and ultimately help us ‘arrive’ at the rhythm of the poem . Therefore,

163 Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory] . (Leningrad: Sovetsky Pisatel, 1975) p. 238. 164 Walcott. “Magic Industry”, p. 6. 165 Hecht. ‚Introduction’ to Joseph Brodsky. A Part of Speech, p. x. 166 Iuri Lotman. O poetakh i poezii: analiz poeticheskogo teksta, stat’i i issledovaniya, zametki, retsenzii, vystupleniya. [On poets and poetry: analysis of poetical text, essays and researches, articles, reviews, lectures] (St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPB, 1996) p. 67. Original quote runs as follows: «Основы современной теории рифмы были заложены В.М. Жирмунским, который в 1923 г. ... увидел в рифме не просто совпадение звуков, а явление ритма.» 167 «...должно отнести к понятию рифмы всякий звуковой повтор, несущий организующую функцию в метрической композиции стихотворения.» Quoted fromViktor Zhirmunsky. ‘Rifma, yeyo istoria i teoria’ [Rhyme, its history and theory ] in Zhirmunsky, Teoria Stikha, p. 246.

60

in the poems written in dolnik, rhymes represent the last support for our rhythmical sense.

Zhirmunsky maintains that if verse written in dolnik were deprived of the rhymes, it would

loose its rhythmical equilibrium and become ‘a heap of debris.’

In Chapter Eight I will try to demonstrate on the basis of concrete textual examples the

hypothesis that Brodsky preferred the lesser evil to the greater one with regard to his

translations, i.e. that his verse produced unconventional connotations in English for the sake

of retaining the feminine rhymes in it rather than for it to lose its metrical structure altogether.

I believe that Brodsky’s own translational intentions were far from introducing

‘foreignising’ effects deliberately: his translating principles were simply those of a formal

translation. Because of the Anglo-Russian contrasts in poetic tradition and prosody, Brodsky’s

self-translating interventions resulted, however, in a curious phenomenon, as I will try to

show on the concrete textual analysis. On the one hand, Brodsky achieved in his English

translations authentic euphonic-semantic unity; on the other, he based this very unity on

compositional principles partly alien to English poetic usage and tradition. Such an

approximation of Russian and English linguistic systems in Brodsky’s self-translations might

have been unintentional, and yet, if established, it sets a unique precedent in the history of

poetry translation into English and merits a wider discussion in the larger context of the

theory of translation.

61

Chapter 5: Brodsky’s biography – the ‘twists of language’

Prospero: …when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like A thing most brutish, I endow’d thy purposes With words that made them known. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)

Dear savages, though I’ve never mastered your tongue, free of pronouns and gerunds, I’ve learned to bake mackerel wrapped in palm leaves and favor raw turtle legs, with their flavor of slowness. (Joseph Brodsky, ‘Infinitive’)

Learning English

Clarence Brown, an Oxford Professor of Russian who met Brodsky in Leningrad in

1966, described thus Brodsky’s spoken English at the time before his expatriation:

When Brodsky first shouted an English poem by George Herbert into my ear outside a café on Gorky Street 14 years ago, I thought he was speaking Lithuanian. Now his English suffices for this stately elegy on Lowell, and one looks forward to the sequel.168

The elegy to which Brown refers was composed in 1978. How was such a change in

Brodsky’s English possible? In the present chapter we will examine how such a

transformation could occur within a span of just 12 years, especially considering that Brodsky

spent the first six years of this period living in the Soviet Union.

According to his own account, Brodsky hated English while he was at school: ‘At the

age of ten I regarded this language as an unnecessary evil. So much that I was almost left for a

second year in the fourth grade: on account of my poor showing in English and botany.’ 169

This attitude was hardly surprising given the content of his reading programme:

… our textbooks were stuffed with the standard propaganda garbage translated into English… A biography of Stalin, a memoir of some party faithful meeting, Lenin in his Finnish hideout… there was not a single English ditty or nursery rhyme that could

168 Brown, Clarence. „The Best Russian Poetry Written Today“, New York Times’ Book Review, 12:1 (9 September 1980) p. 11. 169 Brodsky, ‘Learning English’, Beinecke, Box 12, Fld 16.

62

at least animate you to the sound of this language, because a child delights in jingle even when it’s incomprehensible.170

At the age of 15, Brodsky left school, an act absolutely crucial to understanding his

character. In Stalinist Russia it revealed in its agent an unheard-of degree of independence:

I simply couldn’t stand certain faces in my class – of some of my classmates, but mostly of teachers. Of emotions overpowering me at that moment, I remember only a general disgust with myself for being too young and for letting so many things boss me around. 171

To fully appreciate the significance of Brodsky’s action even the slightest notion of the kind

of totalitarian state in which his school was situated should suffice.

This was the end of his formal education. From then on he began avidly acquiring his

knowledge through autodidactic means. He began with Polish, Poland being at the time,

according to Brodsky, ‘a window to Europe’, i.e. the main channel of information about the

world and literature; a great number of books of Western and Polish literature that could not

be procured in the Soviet Union were published there. Later, Brodsky would claim to have

read about eighty percent of modern European literature first in Polish.172

English followed. It is difficult to ascertain when exactly Brodsky’s post-scholastic

interest in English poetry and language started. Tomas Venclova, a poet and a friend of

Brodsky’s, suggests that he inherited the ‘Anglophone orientation’ from Anna Akhmatova, a

great Russian poet who was his mentor through his early poetic career, but it must remain a

matter of conjecture.

Whatever the case may be, the decisive moment came when Brodsky started to

discover the poetry of John Donne and others of Donne’s school at the beginning of the

1960s. Much has been said on the importance and influence of John Donne on Brodsky. One

passage from an altogether different source, however, seems to put the nature of this influence

into a nutshell. Auden believes that artistic influences from a remoter time and culture can be

accepted by an artist with fewer reservations. W.H. Auden writes:

170 Idem 171 Helen Benedict, „Flight from predictability: Joseph Brodsky“, The Antioch Review, 3:1 (Winter 1985), p. 12. 172 Thomas Venclova. Stat’i o Brodskom [Essays on Brodsky]. (Moscow: Baltrus/ Novoje Izdatel’stvo, 2005.) p. 122.

63

In general the further away from you in time or feeling that poets are, the more you can get out of them for your own use. Often some piece of technique thus learnt really unchains one’s own Daemon quite suddenly. 173

In Auden’s case such an influence came from Anglo-Saxon and Middle English

poetry; for Brodsky it came from seventeenth century English metaphysical poetry.

Brodsky discovered Donne in 1964 while serving a five-year sentence of hard labour

confinement in the Arctic Circle on charges of social parasitism. Equipped with only a

bilingual dictionary Brodsky notably used a very original approach to internalize Donne’s

poems by ‘laboriously translating the opening and closing stanzas of some poem … and

trying to imagine how, by the as yet undeciphered intermediate stanzas, these poles might

shrewdly and surprisingly be linked.’174

Donne’s influence unleashed something which was to remain in Brodsky’s poetry

until the very end. One can think of many typical traits of Brodskian poetics which point to

his kinship with Donne. These are just some of them: his penchant for operating with

conceits, his metaphysical wit, or fondness for finding resemblances between the most

disparate phenomena; the metrical peculiarity of some of his verse reflecting the ‘rhythm of

the thought’175, rather than purely musical rhythm; and his propensity for using his own

metaphors as objects of further contemplation.

The fact that at such an early stage in his poetic career, English poetics left this

indelible imprint on Brodsky’s Russian poetry may partly explain why, when at a later period

he began translating himself into English, the rift between these two languages and

sensibilities appeared to him less daunting. Although other translators insisted on the

existence of unbridgeable gaps between English and Russian poetic usages, entailing radically

different approaches to translations, Brodsky was more sensitive to their similarities.

If in Donne Brodsky found a poetic model from a remote past, in Auden he found a

contemporary not only to love and admire, but also to model his poetry and even his life after,

‘a conduct whose metre and poise were modelled on Wystan’s.’176 Despite the fact that Auden

was 33 years his senior, Brodsky still considered him a contemporary. He believed that ‘a

poet’s influence … emanation or radiation lasted for a generation or two.’ Thus he considered

173 Quoted in: Humphrey Carpenter. W. H. Auden: A biography. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981) p. 55. 174 Hecht, ‘Introduction’ to Joseph Brodsky. A Part of Speech, p. ix. 175 This is T.S. Eliot’s famous description of a special feature of metaphysical poetry. 176 Derek Walcott. ‘Italian Eclogue: to Joseph Brodsky’ in The New York Review of Books, 23: 13 (8 August 1996), p. 18.

64

such poets as Frost, Tsvetaeva, Auden, Cavafy, Rilke, Akhmatova, Mandelstam and Pasternak

his contemporaries. 177 Brodsky himself describes his discovery of Auden:

Beginning in about 1964 I would read Auden when I came across him, deciphering him line by line. At some point in the late 1960’s I was already beginning to understand things. I couldn’t help but understand him – not so much his poetics as his metrics. That is, this is what poetics are. What in Russia is called a dolnik, or accentual verse – disciplined and very well organized. With a marvellous internal caesura, in a hexametrical manner. And this aftertaste of irony. … This ironical element is more the achievement of the English language than of Auden. That whole English technique of understatement. ….178

One of the first manifestations of Auden’s influence on Brodsky was the poem in

memory of T.S. Eliot (‘Na smert’ T.S. Eliota’) in which Brodsky adopted the metre and

stanzaic design of Auden’s poem in memory of Yeats. Even more extraordinary than the fact

of Auden’s influence on a young Russian poet, were the circumstances in which Brodsky

composed his elegy. Susan Sontag, the famous American writer and a friend of Brodsky,

describes them in an essay:

The young, as yet unpublished poet from Leningrad fulfilling a sentence of compulsory labor on a collective farm, in a village in the far North, near the White Sea, receives the news – it is January 1965 – that T.S. Eliot has died in London, sits at a table in his icy shack, and within the next twenty-four hours composes a long elegy to Eliot, which is also an homage to the very alive W.H. Auden (the tone and swing of whose elegy on the death of Yeats he adopts.)179

As Sontag justly notes, the disparity between these two places – Eliot’s England where

he died and Brodsky’s Arctic kolkhoz where he was serving his term – could not have been

greater. In overcoming this disparity and composing this elegy, Brodsky demonstrated, in

Sontag’s view, ‘an exceptional development of the talent for being, mentally, in two places at

once.’ 180

Czesław Miłosz points to the paradox that Brodsky in his arctic confinement writing a

Russian poem in memory of Eliot, was the only poet to elegize this man who did so much for

English letters in the twentieth century: “…I was fascinated by the fact that T.S. Eliot, who

177 See also: Solomon Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, (New York: The Free Press, 1998) p. 41. 178 Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, p. 129. 179 Sontag. ‚Joseph Brodsky’, in Where the Stress Falls, p. 330. 180 Idem

65

lives now in Limbo, as is usual after the death of a great poet, found in fact that only a

Russian poet wrote a poem upon his death….”181

More and more frequently, Brodsky wrote poems which, by his own admission were

influenced by Auden:

I liked Auden more and more. I even composed a few poems that seemed to me to be under his influence: ‘The End of a Beautiful Era’, ‘Song of Innocence’, and…’Letter to General Z’… By the end of my existence in the Soviet Union – the late 1960s and early 1970s – I knew Auden more or less decently. That is, for a Russian, I knew him better than anyone, I think. Especially … his ‘Letter to Lord Byron’ , which I laboured over mightily, translating it. For me, ‘Letter to Lord Byron’ became an antidote for every kind of demagoguery.182

Brodsky’s degree of internalization of poetry written in a foreign language is quite

remarkable and especially unique in a Russian poet of his epoch.183 Even the famous

‘nostalgia for a world culture’ cannot satisfactorily account for it.

Many years later Brodsky was – rather unusually – interviewing his friend, the Polish

poet Miłosz. When Brodsky asked Miłosz whether he had been influenced by English or

American poetry in his own writing, the latter, who by that time had been living in the USA

for several decades and was also involved in translations of his own verse into English,

responded with disarming frankness. As opposed to his interrogator, Miłosz could not

appreciate poetry to a satisfactory degree unless it was written in his native Polish: ‘Miłosz: I

must make here a very frank and maybe shameless admission: that basically I am, when I read

poetry in foreign languages, I am separated by a glass pane.’184 Most of the Russian poets and

readers among Brodsky’s contemporaries would easily subscribe to the feelings expressed

here by Miłosz.

What undoubtedly furthered Brodsky’s interest and appreciation of English poetry was

his activity as a translator. Many Soviet poets regarded poetry translation quite rightly as

literary drudge work, devised, according to Nadezhda Mandelstam, in the early thirties by

181 Czeslaw Milosz. Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations/ edited by Cynthia L. Haven, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006) p. 107. See also Czeslaw Milosz, “A Struggle Against Suffocation” (review of A Part of Speech by Joseph Brodsky), The New York Review of Books, 27: 13, (August 14, 1980) p. 6. „I know of no poet in the West who mourned Eliot in a poem.” 182 Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, p. 129. 183 “I think that encountering a strange language is something a Russian basically can but would rather not understand. The circumstances of his life haven’t prepared him for it.” Brodsky in Volkov, Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, p. 126. 184 Czeslaw Milosz. Conversations, p. 117.

66

Soviet authorities as a method of deflecting the poets’ energy from writing their own poetry.

This was certainly the case with Osip Mandelstam:

When [Mandelstam’s] own work was being systematically rejected by ‘vigilant’ editors … he was driven to translating in order to live. He had to translate under sweatshop conditions, the texts assigned him being the trash en vogue at the time with the authorities. This loathsome hackwork even crowded out his own muse. He had to endure reading here and there in official reference works … that he had given up poetry and ‘gone over to translating’, a legend that clung to his name for years.185

Stephen Spender remarked in a letter to Brodsky upon reading Nadezhda

Mandelstam’s memoir: ‘My impression is that in Russia you were writing in a prison where

the warders and prison governor were afraid that a poem might be dynamite. In ‘the West’ we

are writing in a well-furnished vacuum corridor through which you may travel without

hindrance throughout our world. Ultimately the only reality for us is to be poets writing for

other poets – perhaps that will also finally be the development in Russia.’ 186

The situation was altogether different with Brodsky. All the evidence indicates that he

derived a great degree of pleasure from translating, as was also suggested by Viktor Kulle: ‘to

determine a boundary between those translations which Brodsky did for his pleasure and

those which he did simply to earn his living seems to be an impossible and risky task.’ 187

(Transl. Z.I.) Brodsky must have recognized independently from his beloved Auden that: ‘The

attempt to translate the poetry of one language into another is an invaluable training for a

poet….’ 188 The esteem in which he held English literature was quite high compared to his

utter lack of it towards German or French literature, which had once been historically

mainstream Russian influences: ‘[it is] rather sad [that] Russian cultural tradition is oriented

mainly towards French and German literature. Which in comparison with what was happening

at the same time in English literature is pure kindergarten.’189

The notes taken by an American exchange student, Lynette Labinger, who visited

Brodsky in Leningrad in 1970 to deliver messages between him and American poet Peter

185 Clarence Brown ‘Introduction’ to Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems. (New York: Atheneum, 1974) p. xvii. 186 Spender, Stephen. ‘Letter to Brodsky from Maussane, France, 4 July 1972’, Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 18. 187 Quoted in Iakov Gordin. ‘Introduction’ to Joseph Brodsky,V ozhidanii varvarov: Mirovaya poeziya v perevodakh Iosifa Brodskogo, pp. 5-6. The original quote of Viktor Kulle runs as follows: «Установление границы между переводами, выполненными Бродским «для души», и теми, посредством которых он пытался заработать себе на жизнь, представляется занятием довольно рискованным»). See also Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, p. 151. 188 Auden, Forewords & Afterwords, p. 7. 189 Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, p. 152.

67

Viereck, give us an additional confirmation of these preferences of Brodsky’s in her informal

notes:

We talked a bit about poetry. I know nothing about poetry – why not? what have I read? – very little. ‘Bad. I am a patriot, but I must say that English poetry is richest in the world. English-speaking people who avoid study of their own poetry to take up ours – though it is good – are lazy.’ Told me I must take it up. Gave me John Donne’s ‘The Ecstasy’ to read while he made a phone call. …. Later asked him – did he want to leave the country? – Yes, probably not forever, but for a while. – Where? – … Ireland. Yes, and Venice in the winter. Not France, I hate France and the French. The only two Frenchmen I ever respected, Pascal and (can’t remember), are dead.190

There was also an existential value to Brodsky’s pursuit of the English language – it

helped him ‘to obliterate the local reality’. That is why we find letters written as early as in

1965 from his Northern confinement signed ‘Joseph Brodsky’ – the English version of his

name. In some of these letters the poet also introduces into his epistolary single phrases in

English and even tries – albeit half-seriously and making amends for his English – to

compose a poem in English:

My window is immoral kiss of white twilighte 191

Of equal importance is also Brodsky’s attempt back in 1969 to execute his first

translation into English of a poem by his friend Leningrad poet Vladimir Ufliand, a translation

which, whatever its merits, reveals an unrelenting desire of Brodsky to master English.192 The

same desire recurs ina letter from Nadezhda Mandelstam to Carl Proffer written in February

1973 a short time after Brodsky’s expulsion from the USSR:

Give my love to Brodsky and tell him not to be an idiot. Does he want to feed the moth once more? We have no mosquitoes for such as he because he deserves only the North of our country. So let him be happy where he is, he ought to be it. And he will learn the language which he had longued [sic] for all his life. Did he master English? If not, he is crazy. I would have mastered it even in my age which is 73.193

190 Brodsky. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, p. 5. 191 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Letter no. 10 from 21 May 1965, Norenskoe’. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. 192 «В целом люди прекрасны» (In general people are beautiful) a poem that Vladimir Ufliand wrote in 1958 and which was translated by Brodsky into English. The translation is dated 22 January 1969, ‘Brodsky MSS,’ Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 56 Fld 6. 193 Nadezhda Mandelstam. ‘Letter to Carl Proffer from February 1973’, Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 56 Fld 24.

68

Learning to speak a language requires practice. While he was living in Leningrad,

Brodsky was obviously enough deprived of such an opportunity. It is clear that translation

was his main exercise in English, which, as yet unbeknownst to him, was to become his

second native language. By 4 June 1972, the day when he became an involuntary exile, or put

bluntly, was expelled from his native country, Brodsky had translated into Russian John

Donne, Andrew Marvell, George Herbert, Robert Frost, Dylan Thomas, Robert Lowell,

Richard Wilbur, Brendan Behan, Randall Jarrell, T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, William Carlos

Williams and many other English and American poets.

Guests from the future

As we have just said, living in Leningrad, Brodsky did not have much chance to

practice his spoken English; this however is not entirely the case.From time to time there

came visitors from Anglophone countries, some of whom were subsequently to become his

closest friends in the West. Mostly, they would speak Russian, but with some of them

Brodsky could practise his English. One of such visitors was Lynette Labinger who wrote

down in a diary this precious account of Brodsky’s spoken performance in English back in

1970. Labinger discovered that Brodsky’s English, although not fluent, was exceedingly

functional:

We spoke mostly in English – my Russian was a failure – no confidence on my part. … His English was surprisingly good for someone who taught himself. Good not in its grammatical exactness but in his ability to express so many of his ideas. He joked about how bad his English was, but I think he was proud of it and his own accomplishment nevertheless. 194

This tension, though in other forms, between English being his second language and

Brodsky’s ever increasing proficiency in it, would manifest itself through all his life – it is

indeed, the central subject of this thesis.

Another guest from the Anglophone dimension was one of Brodsky’s closest friends

Carl Ray Proffer, a professor of Russian literature at the University of Michigan and the

founder of Ardis Publishers, who met Brodsky in Leningrad in the 1960s. Ardis, which Carl

Proffer established together with his wife Ellendea Proffer in the beginning of the 1970’s, set

194 Brodsky, Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, pp. 4-6.

69

out to publish works of Russian writers which could not be published at the time in their

country:

… Ardis was … very much a family operation, where children in their teens played not a small role. … Proffers would invariably take their kids [on the numerous trips to Russia] who confused the KGB surveillance by running in all possible directions, hiding important mail in their parkas and in general creating a great commotion. The crucial part of Ardis’ operation was, of course, obtaining the manuscripts and getting them out of the country. Some of the schemes were more mind-boggling than any of Le Carre or Len Deighton’s.195

Proffer dispatched through a diplomatic pouch an essential part of the manuscripts of

Ostanovka v pustyne, which was the first Russian edition of Brodsky’s verse published

outside Russia, but over which Brodsky exercised his editorial control.196 (All of Brodsky’s

subsequent Russian collections of poetry written during the time he lived in the U.S. were

published by Ardis.) It was also Carl Proffer who collected Brodsky from the airport in

Vienna when he was forced to emigrate and subsequently took him to Auden’s summer house

in Kirchstetten. Proffer seems to be responsible in the final analysis for Brodsky’s eventual

decision to settle in America, for it was due to his influence that Brodsky obtained the

position of Poet in Residence at the University of Michigan in late 1972. 197

Another ‘foreigner’ who met Brodsky in Leningrad in 1967 was his first English

translator George L. Kline, a Philosophy Professor at Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania.198

When on one of his visits to the USSR in 1968, George Kline told Brodsky about Penguin’s

plans to put out a book of English translations of his works and asked him whom he would

prefer to write a foreword to the volume, Brodsky’s immediate response was, ‘Auden,

naturally! But that’s highly unlikely.’ His surprise was indeed very great when he learnt that

Auden actually agreed to do the foreword. 199 According to Brodsky the moment when he

learnt about it ‘was one of the most thrilling moments’ of his life and everything that

195 Joseph Brodsky. “Carl R. Proffer: In Memoriam.” A lecture given on 1 April 1985 (unpublished). Beinecke Library Brodsky Estate. Box 43 Fld 12. 196 Ostanovka v pustyne was published in 1970 by Chekhov Publishing Co., Columbia University. See also: George L. Kline., ‘A History of Brodsky’s Ostanovka v pustyne and his Selected Poems.’, Modern Poetry in Translation, 10 (Winter 1996) p. 15. 197 Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, p. 130. 198 Translations by Lord Nicholas Bethell published in a book Elegy to John Donne and other Poems in 1967 in London was done without Brodsky’s consent and was acknowledged by many experts as “hasty, inaccurate, and awkward”. See also: George L. Kline., ‘A History of Brodsky’s Ostanovka v pustyne and his Selected Poems,’ p. 15. 199 Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, p. 130.

70

happened afterwards including the Nobel Prize for literature that he won in 1987 was in a

sense ‘an anticlimax’.200

Language of exile

When Brodsky arrived in Vienna on the 4 June 1972 and was picked up by his friend

Carl Proffer, his first impulse was to see Auden as he knew that the latter was supposed to be

at his summer house in Kirchstetten, Austria. Brodsky was fortunate enough to be received by

Auden in front of his house:

On the first day, when he and I sat down in Kirchstetten and began our conversation, I started to ask him questions. It was a long interview about what he thought of various English language poets. In reply, Auden gave me (somewhat reluctantly) rather precise formulations which to this day are for me – well, not exactly law, but something to bear in mind nonetheless. All this took place over several sessions. Auden was objective. He judged poets regardless his personal sympathies.201

In his conversations with Brodsky Auden spoke very quickly in a rare mixture of

‘New York English’ and ‘Oxonian’ and at first Brodsky took great pains to understand him as

he had never heard anything of the kind. What Auden was saying happened to be, however, of

great consequence to the younger poet:

When I arrived, my English was in an embryonic state, which was natural if you consider the odds then of a Russian ever using it. I even wonder somewhat at the patience Auden exhibited toward all my grammatical eccentricities. I was capable of asking a few questions and listening to the answers, but [not] to formulate my own thought in such a way that I wasn’t ashamed…202

Auden was also the one who helped Brodsky a great deal during his first days in the

West. He procured Brodsky some start-up funds from the Academy of American Poets so as

to ensure that Brodsky was not completely penniless in his first days in the West. He also

organised Brodsky’s participation at the Poetry International Festival in London, where they

flew together two weeks after Brodsky’s arrival in Austria. They stayed several days together

at the house of another poet, Auden’s friend from the late twenties, Stephen Spender, who

subsequently became a close friend and admirer of Brodsky’s.203 Spender’s manner of

speaking which, according to Brodsky, had all the ‘nobility, civility, grace and detachment’

200 Ibid., p. 203. 201 Ibid., p. 130. 202 Ibid., p. 135. 203 Ibid., pp. 132-133.

71

the English language had to offer,204 left a great impression upon the Russian poet and fired

up his love affair with the English language:

It was for me [a] gripping, stunning [pleasure] … to hear Oxford English. The phenomenal nobility of sound! That is what happened when Auden and I arrived in London and I heard English from the mouth of Auden’s good friend, the poet Stephen Spender. I remember my reaction: I nearly fainted. I was simply staggered! Few things have ever made that kind of impression on me. … I immediately understood why English is an imperial language. All empires have existed not because of their political structures but because of the linguistic bond. Because what unifies people more than anything else is language. 205

Such were Brodsky’s approximate notions and knowledge of English at the time of his

arrival in the autumn of 1972 to what was to become his second native land – America.

Early Americana

Brodsky, who had never had a chance of expressing his views in print in his

homeland, received such an opportunity in his adoptive country. His very early publication

was in great part dedicated to politics, apparently rather against his will, because Brodsky felt

the urge to withstand the attempts of some Western journalists who were trying to exploit his

expulsion from the U.S.S.R. for their own political purposes. This had to do with the

prehistory of his arrival to America, with the fact that the West had come to know of Brodsky

as a victim of Soviet regime long before it read any of his poems. (This prehistory will

become of particular interest in Chapter Eight in connection with the translational materials

pertaining to the poem ‘The North buckles metal’).

In January 1964 Brodsky was tried and sentenced to five years hard labour in the

Arctic Circle by Soviet trial on charges of social parasitism. (By that time he had already

served two times in prison and sat in mental hospitals). Evidence presented by his defenders

of numerous poetry translation jobs in which Brodsky was engaged at the time were

disregarded by his judges: the fact that Brodsky was not a member of the Union of the Soviet

Writers counted infinitely more for the Soviet jury. The journalist Frieda Vigdorova managed

to take notes of this outrageous trial and permitted their publication abroad while Brodsky

204 Joseph Brodsky. “In Memory of Stephen Spender” in On Grief and Reason: essays. (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 1996), p. 461. 205 Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky, p. 126.

72

was still serving his term. These notes appeared in The New Leader in English translation as

early as 31 August 1964. 206

His trial in 1964 and the confinement which followed it remained for Brodsky a

controversial issue to the very end. In his first publication in the West he was apparently

implicitly reacting to the constant attempts to turn his into a political case. Brodsky was

certainly aware that it was probably in the connection with this kangaroo trial that he first

became known in the West. The attention this trial aroused in the West presumably led to the

shortening of Brodsky’s term by the Soviet authorities (Sartre was one of the prominent

intellectuals from the West to sign a letter in support of Brodsky’s release). On the other hand,

Brodsky was very much against the idea of his penal experience being turned into a showcase

of political martyrdom. With all his vigour he tried to separate his artistic achievements from

any type of political notoriety. Whenever Brodsky encountered endeavours at considering his

art in the light of politics, he was afflicted beyond description.

One of the characteristic examples was the book Brodski ou le procès d'un poète207

published in Paris by Efim Etkind, a prominent literary critic and one of the most devoted

admirers and partisans of Brodsky back in the USSR. (Shortly after Brodsky’s expulsion

Etkind, who kept the manuscripts of the former’s verse, lost his position at the Leningrad

University, was ostracised, and later expelled from the country208). In his book written on the

occasion of Brodsky’s Nobel Prize award in 1987 Etkind introduced Brodsky to the French

readership by retelling on about 150 pages the history of the latter’s trial and confinement.

Brodsky was simply enraged when he had read the book. In a letter written by Brodsky to

Etkind in 1987 Brodsky argues that Etkind drew the reader’s attention to the history of his

political persecution too strongly. By so doing, according to Brodsky, Etkind drew it at the

same time away from the most relevant of subjects – Brodsky’s art. Etkind followed thus the

path of Brodsky’s persecutors, thereby degrading poetry, which possesses its own dynamics

independent from politics:

… I do not object to any philological studies connected with my works of art – they are what one might call a public property. But my life, my physical existence has always belonged with God’s help and still belongs solely to myself. …. What seems to me to be the worst aspect of this enterprise is that such works serve the same purpose

206 More information about the trial can be derived from this publication in The New Leader from 31 August 1964 or in the September 1964 edition of Stephen Spender’s Encounter. 207 Efim G. Etkind. Brodski ou le procès d'un poète / présentation et commentaire d'Efim·Etkind, (Paris: Libr. Générale Française, 1988). 208 See also Efim Etkind. ‘Letter to Brodsky,’ (1973-1986), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld. 49.

73

as the events they describe: they reduce literature to the level of political reality. Voluntarily or not … you simplify for the reader the idea about my humble self: you – pardon me the gravity of my tone – rob the reader (as well as the author, by the way). ‘Oh, I see,’ a Frenchman from Bordeaux will say, ‘He’s a dissident. That’s why the anti-Soviet Swedes have given him the Nobel [Prize].’ And he won’t buy the poems. (Transl. Z.I.)209

As is evident from the above quotation, Brodsky was of opinion that apart from being

simply a manifestation of bad taste (‘for a writer to mention his penal experiences – or for that

matter, any kind of hardship – is like dropping names for normal folk,’210) such an approach

was absolutely lethal for literature. He was convinced that art should be judged exclusively by

its own criteria, especially since political martyrdom rarely, if ever, coincides with artistic

vocation.

In the year 1972, notably in the middle of the Cold War, The New York Times

Magazine published the article, ‘A Writer is a lonely traveller, and no one is his helper’.

Naturally some journalists in the West were tempted to seize the opportunity to make a

political case out of Brodsky’s expulsion from the U.S.S.R. They expected him to depict in

his first publication the horrors of the persecutions he had suffered in the Soviet Union and to

describe the outrageous injustice writers suffer in a despotic totalitarian regime. It did not,

however, take him long to show them that this would not do and that in his case they had to

deal with quite a discomforting visitor:

… I did not leave Russia of my own free will…I doubt that anyone would be overjoyed to be thrown out of his home. … No matter under what circumstances you leave it, home does not cease to be home. … And I simply cannot understand why some people expect, and others even demand that I smear its gates with tar. … In Russia I did not allow myself to be used in any political games, all the less will I do so here. …. Russia is my home; I lived there all my life, and for everything that I have

209 Joseph Brodsky. Draft letter to Efim Etkind. (1988), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Folder 49. The original text by Brodksy runs as follows: «Я не возражаю против филологических штудий, свянных с моими худ. произведениями – они, что называется, достояние публики. Но моя жизнь, моё физическое существование, с Божьей помощью принадлежала и принадлежит только мне. ... Что мне представляется самым дурным в этой затее, это – то, что подобные сочинения служат той же самой цели, что и события в них описываемые: что они низводят литературу до уровня политической реальности. Вольно или невольно ... Вы упрощаете для читателя представление о моей милости: Вы – простите уж меня за резкость тона – грабите читателя (как, впрочем, и автора). „А“, скажет французик из Бордо, - „всё понятно. Диссидент. За это ему Нобеля и дали эти шведы-антисоветчики.“ И стихотворения покупать не станет.» 210 Joseph Brodsky. “To Please a Shadow”, Less than one: essays, (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 1996) p. 361.

74

in my soul I am obliged to Russia and its people. And – this is the main thing – obliged to its language.211

Brodsky’s position here might seem paradoxical in the light of the fact that he actually

was indeed a sworn enemy of Communism in whichever form and at whichever place, as well

as the enemy of the Soviet regime, of course. What Brodsky disdained, however, was the ease

with which the new arriving émigrés expatiated about the evils at home from the safety of

their new environment, whereas back home, as he well knew, they would not necessarily

display so much courage. Not less did Brodsky disdain American mass media machine which

urged and encouraged this sort of effusions in the new-arrivals. The combination of both was

precisely what Brodsky later in the article referred to as the ‘inflation of freedom of

speech.’212 Brodsky refused to assist journalists in making a meal of his persecutions in

Russia. He also refused to ‘smear the gates of his home with tar.’ Brodsky maintained that

despite the fact of his persecutions in his home country, the actual difference in his position

and the position of poets in the West was not that different essentially:

The difference between the position of a writer in the East and in the West, in essence, is not too great. Both there and here he tries to knock down a rather thick wall with his forehead. In the former case the wall reacts to the touch of the smallest heads in a way threatening to the writer’s physical condition. In the latter case the wall maintains silence, and this threatens one’s psychological condition. To tell the truth, I do not know which is more frightening. …. A writer is a lonely traveller, and no one is his helper. Society is always more or less an enemy. Both when it rejects him and when it accepts him. At any rate, it does both in rather coarse ways.213

An excessive control of society over his work in the East was, in Brodsky’s view, as

damaging for him as a poet as society’s general disregard for the work of poets in the West.

Further in the article Brodsky gave the American reading public a taste of his politically-non-

correct (even before the coinage of “politically incorrect”) non-conformist views, which were

to become the main trademark of Brodsky’s public appearances and essays in the West:

… I will rely on the good practices of the free press, although freedom of speech, like any freedom bestowed gratuitously, without struggle, has its shadowy sides. For in any second generation, freedom is an inherited rather than personal achievement. Aristocracy – but impoverished aristocracy. It is that freedom of speech which generates inflation of speech.214

211 Brodsky, Joseph. “Writer is a lonely traveller, and no one is his helper,” New York Times Magazine, 8:5 (October 1, 1972), p. 1. 212 Idem 213 Idem 214 Idem

75

To say that ‘freedom of speech’ ultimately generated ‘inflation of speech’ was a

statement one would have least expected to come from a poet who had been denied

publication in his native country and now, having come to the land of press freedom was

enjoying its luxuries for the first time. But this disconcerting unpredictability, which was the

result of Brodsky’s rejection of rules, labels, and systems, was one of his main features and a

line from a famous Frost poem ‘what for the heart of man/ could be less than a treason/ to go

with the drift of things’ must have been particularly dear to him.215 At the same time, as

suggested by the Librarian of Congress James Billington, America has to be given credit here

for still remaining the place which offers living space for such ‘oddballs’ as Brodsky. Czesław

Miłosz echoed the same idea:

[Brodsky] lived in … the sixties … that had a great impact in America, and people were more or less leftist. He had those experiences in Russia, and he had absolutely no illusions in this respect. Fortunately, he lived in America, where political correctness was not absolutely obligatory – so there were some zones where political incorrectness could operate. Fortunately for him, he was not in France, where he wouldn’t have been able to breathe even… Because everything there was submitted to a leftist political correctness.216

It must be said, however, that Brodsky was not entirely on his own with his

unconventional views. A lot of ideas in the article in question echo with what Stephen

Spender had written Brodsky in a letter in July 1972:

… I have been reading the memoirs of Nadezhda Mandelstam and doing so has made me think a great deal about you. It is very difficult to put down my reactions.… I cannot imagine the courage of some of the people described.…I would have been terrified. Communists always frightened me more than Fascists, because there was always the possibility that communists were sincere, and if people are sincere I am always in danger of thinking they are right. Comparing the life described in this book I certainly feel that we in England and America do as individuals have freedoms that are real. However, I think that we misuse them or accept them too lightly, because we do not live constantly in the presence of terrible realities in the way that Russian writers who are aware of truth do. I suppose that most people including the intellectuals are apathetic, drowsy as Mrs Mandelstam says. But those who are awake are probably much more awake than anyone here.217

In this letter Spender seems to share Brodsky’s idea that individual freedoms bestowed

on people in the West are an easy subject for inflation, precisely because there are so easily

215 See also Stephen Spender on Brodsky: “Everything nice that you would like him to think, he does not think. But he is utterly truthful, deeply religious, fearless and pure. Loving as well as hating.” in Stephen Spender, “Bread of Affliction: review of Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems”, New Statesman, (December 14, 1973), p. 11. 216 Czeslaw Milosz. Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations/ edited by Cynthia L. Haven, (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2006), p.195. 217 Spender, Stephen. ‘Letter to Brodsky from Maussane’, France, 4 July 1972,’ Beinecke, Box 19, Fld 18.

76

taken for granted. On the other hand those who had had to struggle for their freedom have

more appreciation for freedom’s value.

Besides the article’s political aspects, Brodsky formulated in it for the first time what

was to become his programme as a poet in exile. The poet declares in the article his

determination to carry on writing in Russian despite all the difficulties arising from his

expulsion:

In order to write well in a language you have to hear it - in taverns, buses and grocery stores. I have not yet invented a way to fight this. But I hope that a man’s language travels with him. And I hope that I will take the Russian language whenever I go. … To paraphrase a German writer who found himself in a similar situation 35 years ago, ‘Die russische Dichtung ist da wo ich bin.’ …. however much may be required, to write in my own language, an occupation which formerly struck me as my personal affair …. I now consider my personal duty.218

Time showed that Brodsky proved able to continue writing verse in Russian until

virtually the very last day of his life. The period immediately following his expulsion from the

U.S.S.R. was a particularly prolific one. Nevertheless, he could not but help noticing from the

very first days in America that his situation as a poet was quite different from what it had

been in Russia.

The importance of being translated

Despite the fact that Brodsky was denied publication in the Soviet press, or rather by

virtue of that fact, his impact on the reader was more immediate. The manuscripts of his

poems circulated in the samizdat, unofficial practice of reproduction and secret distribution of

unpublished manuscripts. Thus his poems were appreciated by the small circle of elected

readers, most of whom were writers themselves and whose opinion he valued highly. Brodsky

also read his poems in private gatherings and could see for himself the great effect his

recitations had on the listeners. Direct contact with his audience was extremely valuable for

the poet and secured him in Russia, all the persecutions notwithstanding, his self-respect as a

writer. This was also why before his expulsion Brodsky had not considered leaving Russia

forever of his own volition, since he wrote poetry in Russian and thought he was writing this

poetry for Russians.219 The same state of mind was reflected in an open letter to Brezhnev

which Brodsky wrote after his expulsion and in which he pleaded with the leader of his

218 Brodsky, ‘Writer is a lonely traveller, and no one is his helper,’ p.1. 219 See also notes by Lynette Labinger in Brodsky, Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, p. 5.

77

country to allow him to return to his home and to contribute with his writings to the benefit of

the society.220 Auden, who read this letter in a German translation, particularly admired it.221

In America his situation as a poet was different. His Russian poems were published in

European and émigré magazines and were sometimes smuggled into the Soviet Union to

eventually reach his regular readers. Now, however, between them and the poet there was the

Atlantic Ocean and the Iron Curtain, and all that was now happening in Russia could not but

feel more and more remote to Brodsky. In fact, he perceived his situation of being separated

from his Russian readers as being locked ‘in a tête-à-tête with a Russian language’ and what

he was writing he wrote ‘for a kind of angel’ of the Russian language.222 That situation was to

remain thus for Brodsky up until the beginning of perestroika. A good illustration of this

situation is the following citation from The Room and a Half, Brodsky’s memoir of his

parents written in 1985:

I write this in English because I want to grant them [his parents] a margin of freedom: the margin whose width depends on the number of those who may be willing to read this. …[E]ven if I had written all this in Russian, these words wouldn’t see the light of day under the Russian sky. Who would read them then? A handful of émigrés…? 223

Not that Brodsky didn’t find admirers of his Russian verse in America; here he also

had a small circle of perfect readers among the émigrés and exiles right from the start. (One

might mention Alexandr Sumerkin, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Gennadiy Shmakov among others)

But to be confined to places ‘where exiles have established a malicious village,’224 in other

words the idea of being limited to the society of expatriates, however dear some of them

might have been to him, could not have appealed to Brodsky. He was much too possessed by

the idea of ‘a world culture’ and too anglophile in his orientation. As opposed to the most of

the émigré writers in America, Brodsky’s main environment was English-speaking right from

the very beginning and he immediately plunged into the world of American letters. Very soon

he made friends among the American poets and writers whose writings he had esteemed, such

as Robert Lowell, Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, Mark Strand, Derek Walcott, Susan

Sontag. His strong personality, sharp intelligence and wit alongside with his thorough

knowledge of poetry in English (hundreds of lines of which he knew by heart and would

220 Joseph Brodsky, ‘Exiled Poet Makes Plea to Brezhnev,’ Washington Post (7 Aug 1972). 221 W.H. Auden. ‘Letter to Brodsky’ (1972), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 2. 222 Benedict. „Flight from predictability: Joseph Brodsky“, p. 17. 223 Joseph Brodsky, Less Than One: essays. (London: Penguin, 1986), p. 460. 224 Quoted from the poem ‘The Capital’ in W.H. Auden. Collected Poems. Mendelson (ed.) (London: Faber&Faber, 1976) p. 145.

78

invariably recite in a conversation) obviously impressed others and won him much of esteem

and affection. But what chance did Brodsky have to show his new English speaking friends

what kind of a poet he himself was? This was bound to be done through translations.

‘Joseph Brodsky: Selected poems’

The first book of translations by which Brodsky was introduced into the English

speaking world was Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems which was first published by the

Penguin Books, London.225 All the translations were made by George L. Kline. It was the first

book over which Brodsky exercised his editorial control, even if this was done from a

distance and across the iron curtain; in the years from 1968 till 1972 the communication

between Brodsky and Kline about texts and their translations was limited to hand-carried

messages delivered by visitors. This is how Kline described it:

These exchanges took three related forms: I sometimes sent a list of questions which Brodsky would answer orally or in a separate note. In other cases he jotted down his answers (often in red ink) on the typed sheet with my questions and gave this to the visitor to bring back to London or Paris or New York.226

Clearly, Brodsky’s control over the translations of his poems was limited at the

beginning to mere linguistic consultancy relating to the content of the Russian poems.

In the year 1969 Kline was introduced by Arkadi Nebolsine, a professor of Russian at

Pittsburg University, to Auden and managed to obtain from him an agreement to write a

foreword for Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems. By the end of April 1970 Auden completed the

Foreword and it was delivered to Brodsky early in May 1970.227 This is what Auden wrote:

One demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, put perceived from a unique perspective. …. A really accurate judgment upon a poem as a verbal object can, of course, only be made by persons who are masters of the same mother tongue as its maker. Knowing

225 The first book of Brodsky’s translations in English by Lord Bethell, Elegy to John Donne and Other Poems was done without Brodsky’s permission and by common consent was considered to be “hasty, inaccurate and awkward”. See also: George L. Kline, ‘A History of Brodsky’s Ostanovka v pustyne and his Selected Poems,’ pp. 15-16. 226 Idem 227 The document was delivered to Brodsky by Michael Curran, a friend of Kline’s and professor of Russian history at Ohio State University, who travelled at the time to Russia and succeeded not without difficulties to smuggle the document into the country. See also: George L. Kline, ‘A History of Brodsky’s Ostanovka v pustyne and his Selected Poems.,’ pp. 17-18.

79

no Russian and therefore forced to base my judgment on English translations, I can do little more than guess about the poems of Joseph Brodsky. My chief reason for believing that Professor Kline’s translations do justice to their originals is that they convince me that Brodsky is an excellent craftsman. … it is clear from the translations that Mr. Brodsky commands many tones of voice, from the lyric … to the elegiac … to the comic-grotesque …, and can handle with equal ease a wide variety of rhymes, meters, short lines, long lines, iambics, anapaestics, masculine rhymes and feminine….228

As we said in the introduction, Auden believed that form in poetry is as intimately

bound up with the meaning ‘as the body is with the soul.’229 His first criterion of judgement

about any poet especially in translation was the technical felicity of the poems, for, as Auden

believed, the ‘technical conventions and devices of verse can be grasped in abstraction from

the verse itself’.230 In Brodsky Auden recognised above all an accomplished craftsman. There

is no doubt that Auden was sincere in believing Brodsky was an excellent craftsman in

Russian, but it is doubtful, however, that Auden could have achieved this sort of impression

on the basis of the translations alone. The translator himself, George L. Kline, had to point out

to Auden quite a few things about the formal aspects of Brodsky’s poems. In the time

preceding the composition of this Foreword Auden had been visited several times in New

York and once in his summer house in Kirchstetten by Kline. The latter gave Auden a number

of his translations introductory notes and essays on Brodsky.231 This is for instance what

Kline wrote in the ‘Note on the Translation’ to the Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems on behalf

of his translations:

Like most Russian poets, Brodsky makes systematic use of rhyme. But … he adds to the store of perfect ‘Pushkinian’ rhymes numerous imperfect or slant rhymes … and … compound slant rhymes… Some of Brodsky’s rhyme schemes are tours de force. …. All of these translations preserve Brosky’s meters, but they use rhymes and slant-rhymes sparingly, and only in those cases where the rhymes can be introduced without ‘padding’. Brodsky himself, in his brilliant translations of John Donne and Andrew Marvell, scrupulously reproduces both the metric pattern and the rhyme scheme of his originals. I wish that I could have done as much in putting Brodsky into English.232

In the passage above Kline refers to Brodsky’s equimetrical translations of English

metaphysical poets. With characteristic modesty Kline was the first to admit his limitations in

228 W.H. Auden, Foreword to Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems. (London: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 9-11. 229 W.H. Auden. ‘Note’, W.H. Auden reading his poetry. [Nonmusic sound recording] (London: Harper Collins Audio Publishers, 1955). 230 Auden, Forewords & Afterwords, p. 334. 231 George L. Kline, ‘A History of Brodsky’s Ostanovka v pustyne and his Selected Poems,’ p. 16. 232 George L. Kline. ‘Note on the Translation’ in Joseph Brodsky, Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems. (London: Penguin Books, 1973) p. 25.

80

preserving the rhymes in his translations. The word ‘sparingly’ with regard to the retention of

the original rhymes very much reflects the state of affairs:

In my translations of Brodsky (and, earlier, of Pasternak and Tsvetayeva) I have tried to preserve the meter, but in some cases have used blank verse where Brodsky uses rhyme; in other cases I have used fewer exact rhymes, and more slant-rhymes, than he does. In still others I have substituted masculine for feminine rhymes of – in blank verse – masculine for feminine endings.233

And yet one might say that Kline’s modesty in admitting his difficulties to achieve

equimetrical translations of Brodsky’s verse in English seems here somewhat excessive. For,

as I mentioned in the introduction to the present thesis, for purely linguistic reasons alone an

equimetrical translation from English into Russian is a considerably easier task than the other

way around. Furthermore, as we are going to discuss at some length in the following chapter,

the entire question of rhyme in translations of Brodsky’s verse is rather controversial, as the

use of feminine rhymes in English is quite problematic.

The originals translated in Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems came predominantly from

Ostanovka v pustyne (1970), Brodsky’s first collection of verse published abroad under

supervision of the author. Out of 51 of Brodsky’s original Russian verse translated in Selected

Poems most was 4 or 5-foot iambics – (27); plus 4-foot-trochae – (1), anapaests – (4),

amphibrach –(1) and a (5) poems written in accentual verse dolnik. The poem New Stanzas to

Augusta (1) was written in iambic lines of irregular length. All of these 39 poems had

alternating masculine and feminine rhymes; the rhyme pattern of several of them was quite

complicated; the 12 remaining poems were either unrhymed sonnets or poems based on Greek

themes written in unrhymed pentameters.

Out of 39 of Kline’s translations of the rhymed poems from Joseph Brodsky: Selected

Poems only 3 reproduce the rhyme pattern of the original. The closest where Kline’s

translation gets to doing so is in the three of the following poems: ‘To a Certain Poetess’, ‘1

January 1965’, ‘A Letter in a Bottle’.234

Apart from these purely prosodic aspects Mr.Kline’s translations tend to be very

literalistic: they reproduce the syntactic units and stick to the original in preserving the same

metaphors and not inventing new ones. The latter, as we will see, was very often a practice of

233 George L. Kline. ‘Translating Brodsky’, Bryn Mawr Now, (Spring 1974) p. 33. 234 See some examples in Appendix to Chapter Five.

81

Brodsky as author-translator. As for Brodsky himself, he seemed to be very delighted with

these translations at the time, as he wrote to Kline in a letter of 1969:

Dear George, I am greatly delighted: it came out wonderfully. To hell with the rhymes, if it works out this way. The only thing that makes me sad is the impossibility of paying you back, for I can’t do anything adequate for you. Forever yours, Joseph. I think that I am terribly lucky.235 Excuse me, please, my terrible English. But I should like to say you the following: remember I respect and love you. … From my point of view you are a big man.236

This letter is very remarkable especially because of its argument: ‘never mind the

rhymes, if it works out this way’. We will see that with time Brodsky became less and less

enthusiastic about the ‘job’ (one of Brodsky’s favourite words) done by his translators and at

the same time more and more adamant about the preservation, above all, of the rhymes.

A great merit of those translations was that they managed to convince Auden of the

uniqueness of Brodsky’s poetic talent. Auden believed that despite the intrinsic impossibility

of the translation of poetry, reading poetry in translation could also bring its advantages.

According to Auden, ‘when reading a poem in one’s native, tongue, one can find the

sensibility personally antipathetic and yet be compelled to admire its verbal manifestation,’

whereas while reading a translation ‘all one gets is the sensibility.’237 Thus, Auden maintains,

it is paradoxically easier for a foreigner to judge the ‘universal relevance of a poet’s

vision.’238 In the Brodsky translated by Kline Auden could recognize an akin sensibility

endowed with capacity to envision ‘sacred objects,’239 lyric’s reserve as opposed to the public

‘roaring’ of Mayakovsky’s ‘trumpets’, love for his native land as well as appreciation for the

tradition:

Mr. Brodsky is not an easy poet, but even a cursory reading will reveal that, like Van Gogh and Virginia Woolf, he has an extraordinary capacity to envision material objects as sacramental signs, messengers from the unseen. …. Unlike the work of some of his contemporaries, Mr. Brodsky’s seems to stand outside what might be called the Mayakovsky tradition of ‘public’ poetry. It never uses a fortissimo. Indeed, original as he is, I would be inclined to classify Mr. Brodsky as a

235 The letter was written half in Russian half in English. The Russian part in original went: “Дорогой Джордж, Я просто потрясён: получилось замечательно. Чёрт с ними, с рифмами, если получается так. Огорчает меня только одно: невозможность благодарности, ибо ничего адекватного я сделать Вам не в состоянии. Forever yours Joseph. По-моему, мне невероятно повезло.” 236 Joseph Brodsky, ‚Letter to George Kline’ (Easter 1969), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld. 50. This letter was written on Easter 1969 on margins of a manuscript of the English publication: ‘Joseph Brodsky, Six New Poems, translated by George L. Kline.’

237 Auden, Forewords & Afterwords, p. 344. 238 Auden. Foreword to Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems, pp. 9-11. 239 See also Auden’s theory on ‘sacred objects’ in W.H. Auden, ‘Making, Knowing and Judging’, The Dyer’s Hand and other essays. (London: Faber & Faber, 1963) pp. 55-56.

82

traditionalist. To begin with, he shows a deep respect and love for the past of his native land. …. After reading Professor Kline’s translations, I have no hesitation in declaring that, in Russian, Joseph Brodsky must be a poet of the first order, a man of whom his country should be proud. I am most grateful to them both.240

Brodsky received such praise with ‘a mixture of astonishment, delight and gratitude’

and wrote Auden a letter expressing his thanks.241 As was mentioned previously Brodsky

deemed this Foreword written by Auden as the highest expression of recognition of him as a

poet he was ever to obtain.

Auden, however, as he himself mentioned in the Foreword, didn’t speak Russian and

even if his judgement of Brodsky as poet was very high, he still could not compare the

translations with the originals. So when, in 1972, shortly after his arrival in the West, Brodsky

received the proofs of the Selected Poems, he sent a copy of them to Alan Myers, to ask his

opinion about Mr. Kline’s translations. This is what Alan Myers, a London based translator

from Russian married to Diana Myers, a Russian and a friend an admirer of Brodsky herself,

wrote in response:

I read Mr. Kline’s translations as you requested. Leaving the question of rhyme aside, I would say that these translations are of a very high standard. Compared with your translations in other countries (as I hear) I think you’re lucky in Mr. Kline. If I didn’t know your poems in the original at all I would feel, like Auden, that a very powerful talent, complex and subtle, was before me. The translations read very well, sometimes the effects are almost magical (John Donne), sometimes splendidly witty (2 chasa) and always reflect the spirit of the original. Of course, one may object to some lines where the rhythm jerks, others where English words have been added to preserve the rhythm – even to some lines as failing to reflect the right tone. BUT this volume will do you enormous credit and in the interest of speedy publication, I would be inclined to accept these translations as a whole.242

Myer’s letter above must have reassured Brodsky at least for the time being that he

was lucky in having Kline as translator, that the translations read very well and on the whole

did its author a great credit in the ‘ears’ of English language readership. This letter must have

eventually convinced Brodsky to agree with a prospect of an expeditious publication of

Kline’s translations and to abstain from making any attempts at revising them before. In the

late July 1972 both Kline and Brodsky went through the proofs of the book. This is how Kline

recalled the occasion some years later, in 1977:

240 Auden. Foreword to Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems, pp. 9-11. 241 George L. Kline. Note on the Translation in Joseph Brodsky, Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems, p. 18. 242 Alan Myers. ‘Letter to Brodsky’ (15 July 1972). Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 20 Fld 7.

83

His [Brodsky’s] sense of literary English is now so keen and subtle that his criticisms and suggestions directed at my draft translations are invariably penetrating and helpful. When, in July 1972, shortly after Brodsky reached this country, we spent a week in the Berkshires going over every line of my typescript of Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems (London, 1973; New York, 1974), he missed very few of my errors and misreadings of his tone (e.g., my failures to detect the irony of given lines). Now he misses absolutely nothing.243

In late April 1973, upon seeing the ultimate set of proofs, Brodsky told Kline he was

delighted with the end result adding: ‘George, no one could have done a better job’244.

On 14 December 1973 New Statesman published Bread of Affliction, Stephen

Spender’s review of Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems. Spender’s review was much more open

and direct as compared to the sustained tone of Auden’s Foreword and understandably so.

When Auden wrote it Brodsky was still living in the Soviet Union and a lot of what he said or

rather did not say was dictated by the considerations of security. When Auden said that

Brodsky had ‘a deep respect and love for the past of his native land’ and was ‘a poet of the

first order, a man of whom his country should be proud’ it reflected the level of persecution to

which Brodsky was subjected as well as the level of denial of any official recognition

whatsoever in his native country. At the time when Spender wrote Brodsky was safe and no

such considerations were needed. Spender is here quite outspoken about Brodsky’s

independence from authorities as well as about the situation a poet had to endure at the time in

Soviet society, i.e. that this independence resulted in Brodsky’s persecutions, trial and

ultimately his forced emigration, and hence also the bitter existential character of Brodsky’s

early poetry:

If a Russian poet laments his situation as a poet in Soviet society, we all know what that situation is: the society oppresses him for the independence of his views and for not singing its praises. … Society provides the drama which in turn makes possible the ironic poetry …. Brodsky is someone who has tasted extremely bitter bread and his poetry has the air of being ground out between his teeth. He sees things from a point of view which is ultimately that of Christians who have devoured bread and gall as the sacraments of the Mass: it should not be supposed that he is liberal, or even a socialist. He deals in unpleasing, hostile truths and is a realist of the least comforting and comfortable kind. Everything nice that you would like him to think, he does not think. But he is utterly truthful, deeply religious, fearless and pure. Loving as well hating. … Above this, there is a great deal else. Firstly, a respect for tradition … whenever he finds it – in

243 George L. Kline., ‘Working With Brodsky’, The Paintbrush, 4:7/8 (Spring & Autumn 1977), p. 25. 244 George L. Kline., ‘A History of Brodsky’s Ostanovka v pustyne and his Selected Poems,’ p. 19.

84

Greek mythology, in Russian classics, and especially in English poetry ranging from Donne to Byron, T.S. Eliot and W.H. Auden.245

Spender also mentions in his review above what Auden had not been able to mention

in the one he wrote about Brodsky, because of the political considerations: namely that the

tradition that was important for Brodsky was not only that of his native country, but maybe to

a greater degree that of the poetry written in English. Besides Spender is trying here to justify

in a very touching way what he himself was later to describe in one of his Journals as

Brodsky’s ‘outrageous quips.’ 246

What Spender says about Kline’s translations is also of a much more critical and direct

nature:

These poems are impressive in English, though one is left having to imagine the technical virtuosity of brilliant rhyming which Mr. Kline describes in his preface. The virtue of this accurate rendering is that it conveys the concreteness, density, literalness of the lines of observation out of which Brodsky constructs his poems whose note, even in its irony, is pre-eminently that of the Old Testament ….Unfortunately with Mr. Kline one is never quite allowed to forget that one is reading a second-hand version rather than original poetry. Some lines are jaw-breakers: ‘The road’s as stubborn as/ the river. / The ash-tree’s shadow is/ a fishnet’. But on the other hand the translation has an honesty which enables one to imagine the poetry that always lies just beyond it.247

No matter whichcritics of Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems did more justice to it and

to its translator George L. Kline one thing is certain: alongside the various publications in the

New Yorker and other prestigious magazines this book was to represent Brodsky in the

English language for several years to come.

On 28 September 1973 Auden suddenly died. Brodsky was devastated. He sent the

editor of Penguin Books a telegram to insert on the half-title of Joseph Brodsky: Selected

Poems ‘To the Memory of Wystan Hugh Auden 1907-1973’, which the editor was able to do

in time. 248

245 Spender, “Bread of Affliction,’ p. 11. 246 Stephen Spender. Journals 1939-1983. (London-Boston: Faber&Faber, 1985) p. 473. Entry from 24 April 1983, New York reads: ‘We asked about modernism in Russia, Joseph was not very forthcoming because he wanted to discuss his theories about modern English poetry. He produced a few quips of the outrageous kind.’ 247 Spender, “Bread of Affliction,’ p. 11. 248 George L. Kline. Note on the Translation in Joseph Brodsky, Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems, pp. 18-19.

85

Teaching English and ‘On Richard Wilbur’

Blessed be all metrical rules, that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free from the fetters of Self. (W.H. Auden)

As early as in 1972 Brodsky started teaching a course in Modern English Literature at

the University of Michigan Ann Arbor where he was the Poet in Residence. Brodsky

described his English seminars in a letter to an acquaintance in Russia in his typical witty way

as ‘a mixture of tolerance and insolence.’ At the beginning his students showed their tolerance

for his poor English, and he showed insolence in presuming to teach them in it. Later, when

his English had improved, it was the other way round: Brodsky showed tolerance to the poor

quality of their thoughts and they showed insolence in displaying it.249 In an interview

Brodsky gave some years later he expatiated more on the first days of his teaching activity in

the U.S.:

When I came to the States, at first I suffered a severe loss of nerve. … How am I going to talk to Americans about their own literature? I felt like I was usurping someone else’s place. I arrived with the notion that everyone here knew everything. … … It became clear [though] that I knew not one whit less about American literature, and American poetry in particular, than most American professors. … [M]y knowledge of this subject is qualitatively different. It is an active knowledge, the knowledge of someone for whom all these texts are precious. More precious, if you like, than for most of them, because my life … was changed by these texts, and American students, as a rule, never come across that kind of approach to literature.250

As it is clear from the above quote, Brodsky was in the beginning uncertain about the

appropriateness of him, a foreigner, teaching American students about their own native

literature, in particularly poetry. Very soon, however, Brodsky discovered that he was not

only better familiar with their poetry, but had internalised it much deeper than any of his

colleagues, let alone his students. It was probably due to this newly acquired awareness of his

unique and almost existential attitude towards American poetry – the poet maintained that his

whole life had been changed by it – that gave Brodsky enough confidence to express his

views about it publicly.251 In January 1973 The American Poetry Review published Brodsky’s

article ‘On Richard Wilbur’ translated from Russian by Carl Proffer.252 This article is of

249 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Letter to Efim Etkind’ (14 March 1973), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 49. 250 Volkov. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky. pp. 147-148. 251 Milosz, “A Struggle Against Suffocation,’ p. 6. 252 Joseph Brodsky, “On Richard Wilbur: review”, pp. 12-18.

86

special interest for us, for in it Brodsky declared his priorities regarding poetry written in

English, even before writing his famous essays on translations from Russian into English. A

lot of subsequent criticism of his theories and practice of translation into English coming from

American and English quarters tried to discard, in their native smugness one is tempted to

add, Brodsky’s theories on the grounds of his insufficient knowledge of English, or similarly

by arguing that he applied his Russian tastes in his pronouncements on English poetry. Yet as

we will see, it was quite the other way round: it was precisely by virtue of his profound

knowledge of English language poetry – and not because of his ignorance of it – that Brodsky

was aware of its great spectre of possibilities; and it was due to this kind of awareness that he

remained so adamant and insistent about certain aspects of translation into English.

The subdued tone of the article still partly revealed Brodsky’s insecurity about the

appropriateness of his pronouncements in the American press on an American poet. He wrote:

‘the things which I can discuss are rather the impressions of a reader than the opinions of a

specialist’ – adding though that to his credit as opposed to an ordinary reader he also had been

the translator of several of Wilbur’s poems into Russian; and then again Brodsky admits

humbly that his considerations on Wilbur might be wrong and Wilbur might be offended upon

reading them. Still he writes, ‘the quality which attracted my attention to Wilbur is his

dramatism, camouflaged by excellence of form.’ But this excellence and beauty of form, as

Brodsky goes on, are ‘never goals in themselves’; for Wilbur ‘beauty is not the ultimate aim

of his feelings and thoughts’, but just ‘an opportunity to journey into higher spheres. At very

best it is a secondary result of such a journey’.

From what looked like a mere defence of formal verse, Brodsky launches into

offensive attacking free verse as a poetic device:

… the laws of Ars poetica, when they are observed, render a greater gain in quality than any breaking of these laws in the name of freedom of self-expression. And what kind of freedom can we speak of once we have experienced fear? …. …. In my opinion a regular meter and exact rhymes shaping an uncomfortable thought are far more functional than any form of free verse. Because in the former case the reader gets a sense of chaos being organized, while in the latter a sense of dependence on and being determined by chaos.253

Hardly could there be indeed a more unpopular thing to state before the American

literati in 1973 than the idea of superiority of a formal verse over free verse. America was a

253 Brodsky, ‘On Richard Wilbur,’ p. 12.

87

country where free verse had long gained the upper hand and Robert Frost himself

represented an unfashionable minority as early as in the teens of the twentieth century. This is

how Robert Lowell described Frost’s situation:

Robert Frost came at unfortunate time. When he arrived in America it was just about time. Modernism began Eliot and Pound, Williams and so forth. None of them would have anything to do with Frost and they took him as a very secondary figure who wrote in old-fashioned style; and unfortunately people who did like Frost were mostly nonentities and he had no choice really. 254

So in fact at the time of the article Brodsky’s views were quite extraordinary and came

completely out of the blue for Richard Wilbur who, upon reading the piece, wrote to Rhoda

Schwartz to express via her mediation his amazement and gratitude to Brodsky:

I am of course most honoured that he would care to write the piece in the first place, and (more importantly) I am gratified to have been the point of departure for such interesting and tonic remarks about form and finish in poetry: it matters greatly to me that he should see and say that in my work – as in the work of others I might name – technical felicity is a means and a by-product rather than an end. This is an unpopular thing which needs saying nowadays, and I admire the concision and clarity with which he puts it.255

Brodsky, however, didn’t limit himself to saying that free verse is aesthetically inferior

to verse displaying ‘a regular meter and exact rhymes.’ He went further, maintaining free

verse’s ethical inferiority. According to Brodsky, writing formal verse requires not only more

skills in a poet offering in return greater aesthetical possibilities; being one of the forms of

resistance to chaos, formal verse ultimately demands more courage from a poet:

From what one could call a moral point of view, the former is more important than the latter. Even in the event that it is not organization, but nothing more than a form of resistance to chaos. For in the physical world only resistance is possible.256

The idea of resistance to all the possible forms of determinism was, as one could see

from his biography, one of Brodsky’s leading ideas and, more importantly, practices. When,

concluding the essay, Brodsky says that from his point of view ‘in the twentieth century

America has been very lucky with poetry – more than any other country in the world,

including Russia’ – it must have been clear that his praise was addressed mainly to the few

formal poets who like Richard Wilbur represented an absolute minority in contemporary

American letters. Brodsky’s friend, Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz confirms, ‘It’s interesting that

254 Robert Lowell, A Reading, recorded on Dec 8, 1976 at the Poetry Centre of the 92nd St., (Caedmon, 1978). 255 Richard Wilbur, ‘Letter to Rhoda Schwartz’ (9 September 1972) Brodsky Papers, Beinicke, Box 19 Fld 8. 256 Joseph Brodsky, “On Richard Wilbur: review”, The American Poetry Review, 2:1, (Jan/Feb 1973) p. 18.

88

Joseph Brodsky was immune to the whole Whitman tradition of poetry. For him, Frost was

the greatest American poet.’257 Accordingly, Brodsky’s ambition, slightly presumptuous in a

non-native speaker as many of his critics held, was to show American poets in the first place

that the potential of formal poetic devices for the development of verse in English, despite the

prevalent and ubiquitous presence of the free verse as a poetical tool ‘of our times,’ persists.

Brodsky was certainly in the minority in his preferences and tastes, but he believed neither in

majority, nor in various forms of ‘-isms’, schools of poetry and current fashions; he believed

much rather in single individuals and in their ability to redress the balance especially in art.

Here is Milosz again to confirm this:

Brodsky and myself stand together and choose to differ from certain Modernist poets …. [G]iven the state of Western poetry at present, Brodsky and I may well be considered to be lingering in the rear guard, but really we may be the avant-garde. That’s something you just never know, because if we poets work hard at it then we can change the direction in which poetry is headed.258

Art vs. politics: the American Left and Free Verse

When Speech was mannerly, an Art, Like learning not to belch or fart: I cannot settle, which is worse The Anti-Novel or Free Verse. (From a ‘Doggerel by a Senior Citizen’ by W.H. Auden)

In the article ‘A writer is a lonely traveller’, discussed previously, Brodsky wrote

about his coming to America: ‘I have seen a new land, but the sky is the same.’259 He was not

an optimistic person and generally had little illusions concerning life and people; neither did

he imagine for himself a rosy future in America. Levertov’s open letter to the editors of The

American Poetry Review must have left Brodsky with even less illusions about anything or

anybody. Having been persecuted at home and eventually thrown out of his country, Brodsky

soon noticed that not everyone in his new democratic homeland was willing to give him a

warm welcome: his oppressors turned out to have their sympathisers also in the ‘land of

opportunities’. This is what Levertov wrote:

I am troubled that the second issue of APR, a publication with which I’ve associated myself as a contributing editor …. should have devoted so much attention to Joseph

257 Milosz. Conversations, p. 190. 258 Ibid., p. 189. 259 Brodsky, ‘Writer is a lonely traveller, and no one is his helper,’ p. 2.

89

Brodsky. …. Brodsky’s choosing to come to this country, rather than any other …is an act of tacit approval of a country that is committing gross atrocities in Asia. … there were other parts of the world in which he could have settled (though he wouldn’t have received, in, say, Norway or New Zealand, the fine house and the adulation he receives in the USA)…. …. at a time when all Europe, all the world, is nauseated by Nixon and the war … [Brodsky] is for Nixon, he defends the Viet Nam war…. And shall we see any demur on Brodsky’s part, any change in his sententious and ignorant ‘pro-Nixon, pro-Vietnam war’ opinions?260

This is just a small exhibit of Levertov’s style. Characteristically most of her article is

dedicated to political issues – which must have seemed to her an adequate response to

Brodsky’s strictly literary observations on Wilbur. As we saw in section 4 of this chapter,

Brodsky was strongly opposed to the tendency to confuse art and politics, notwithstanding the

fact that he himself had strong and well articulated political opinions. Many years later in a

letter to a Swedish publisher Brodsky criticised the politicised approach to art of which

Levertov’s letter is a characteristic example:

What constantly gets me … is how quickly any discourse on culture degenerates in these parts into a moralistic prattle. Whether it is a piece of music or poetry, in five minutes one finds oneself talking about Holocaust, nuclear threat or waste, Vietnam, contra and so forth. This could be attributed, of course, to Protestant sensibility; I think, however, it is the lack of cultural expertise and uncertainty of aesthetical values that makes one eager to switch to ethics because ethics provide one with a more tangible hierarchy, because in ethics it is easier to attain a firm ground, a commendable posture. For in ethics, the notion of good is stratified in a far more banal, finite and therefore palpable fashion that in aesthetics. Hence the high utilitarian value of moralising: it provides an individual with an ultimate comfort – that of his mind, i.e., it turns one into a mental bourgeois. In ethics, it is rather easy to find yourself far better off than the other. 261

In the letter above Brodsky argues that in art with its rigid aesthetic hierarchy the only

legitimate judgement should be based upon aesthetics, i.e. artistic taste. It is precisely the lack

of such taste that results in a substitution of this hierarchy with ‘moralistic prattle’ particularly

popular in America as Brodsky believes. Returning to Levertov’s letter, one can observe,

however, that it did not get more pleasant when she touched upon the matters of art:

A literary objection: what is APR doing, allowing Brodsky – quite apart from any political considerations, simply as someone obviously ill-equipped to comprehend poetry written in English – to pontificate about Richard Wilbur (or any other

260 Denise Levertov, “Letter to the Editors”, The American Poetry Review, 2:2, (Mar/Apr 1973) p. 22. 261 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Draft of a letter to Askold, a Swedish publisher’ (undated), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 7.

90

American poet)?.... I … find Brodsky’s ignorant praise of him insulting to Wilbur. Like most Russian poets, Brodsky’s preference for ‘regular meter and exacting rhymes’ stems from the nature of the Russian language which provides generous numbers of rhymes and is altogether a language of abundance, in vocabulary and in syntactic variations. Moreover, I have a theory that the emotive quality, the affect, of certain rhythms which are either outworn or have rather ridiculous associations in one language, is quite different in another. Therefore Brodsky’s opinions about the qualities of Wilbur’s structures are quite valueless… ... like most Russians, again, Brodsky is really only familiar with Frost among the American master poets of the 20th century, and with his ignorance of the ‘functional’ capacities of ‘free verse’ …. his praise of Wilbur is without context, without any placing in the spectrum of American poetry or of modern poetry anywhere.262

The article is of particular interest for us as it was written at the time when Brodsky

had not yet ‘intervened’ in any of English translations of his verse or done any of them

himself. Yet, as we will see, most of the subsequent criticisms of ‘English Brodsky’ oddly

enough uses the same arguments against him, a fact which cannot but make us more alert to

the possible lack of soundness in similar argumentation. Let me just recapitulate its main

points:

a) Brodsky is not a native speaker and hence is by definition ‘ill-equipped’ and devoid of

authority to pass judgements on poetry written in English; both his praise and blame are

ignorant.

b) Brodsky’s tastes in English are determined by his own medium – Russian – which is ‘a

language of abundance’ (inflected language with great possibilities for rhyming); accordingly,

his tastes are of no relevance in English.

c) Regular meters are improper in English because of their ‘outworn or rather ridiculous

associations’; in re-proposing them for English Brodsky shows again his ignorance of the

‘functional capacities of free verse’.

In any case Levertov’s article wasn’t meant to make Brodsky feel too comfortable in

his new country. Yet accustomed to worse in the U.S.S.R. and, being more agile and brilliant

than most when it came to words, Brodsky with his wit and biting sarcasm knew how to

defend himself. In the same edition of The American Poetry Review Brodsky’s response to

Levertov was published. He wrote:

I came to America because I am used to living in a great country, and because I know some English – enough in any case to be able to distinguish Sylvia Plath’s free verse from Denise Levertov’s, and human speech from commonplace liberal demagogy; the

262 Levertov, “Letter to the Editors”, p. 22.

91

elite here … is infected with same demagogy to the same degree as those ‘cultured Europeans’ who hate the United States even though precisely this country crossed the ocean twice in this century to save their culture from doom …. It would be more natural to expect from Ms. Levertov – an American poet – compassion for America rather than hate, all the more so … because she is at an age when a person should know that it is too late if you have to choose your friends during a war.263

As to the debate about the pros and cons of the vers libre it was not new for the Anglo-

American letters. Brodsky’s main ‘fault’, it seemed, was that not being a native speaker of

English himself he dared to participate in it on equal footing. To make things worse he

endorsed the ‘wrong’ and ‘old-fashioned’ cause: he was advocating the use of metre and

rhyme in English language poetry not in the teens of the century, but in 1970’s where the

battle seemed to have been long lost.

And yet it is curious to observe that just 60 years prior to that, England’s greatest

prosodist George Saintsbury pointed out how enormously the importance of rhyme in English

poetry had increased in the years between 1600 and 1900:

There can be, on the whole, no question that, during these three centuries, the importance of rhyme has been largely, immensely, increased in English. The great position assumed by rhymeless verse in the case of “blanks” does not at all militate against this… Recent attempts at more varied dispersing with rhyme have, to speak frankly, been either utter failures or more or less interesting tours de force.264

Beyond Consolation: Brodsky’s expectations of translation

Before dealing with Brodsky’s translation practices and the influence he exerted on

translation practices of others, let us first see what his expectations of translations were, for

chronologically they came first.

The gist of Brodsky’s translation demands was laid down in his first two reviews of

English translations of Akhmatova and Mandelstam respectively and many of the things he

said subsequently were just variations on the ideas he expressed in these two reviews.

263 Joseph Brodsky, “Reply to Denise Levertov’s Letter to the Editors”, The American Poetry Review, 2:2, (Mar/Apr 1973) p. 22. 264 Saintsbury. A History of English Prosody, p. 539.

92

The point of departure for the first review called Translating Anna Akhmatova which

first appeared in print on 9 August 1973 in The New York Review265 was the publication of

Poems by Akhmatova translated by famous American poet Stanley Kunitz.

Brodsky begins his review with a rather disconcerting statement: ‘Russian poetry has

not been lucky with its translations into English.’266 Brodsky begins the article by stating that

such bad luck could be ascribed to the properties of ‘the Russian language itself – a synthetic,

too flexible language which cannot be reproduced adequately in analytic English with its ‘iron

word-order’.’267 But this statement is a staged excuse. The article in its entirety struggles to

deprive translators of cosy excuses for insufficient translations and to proclaim the theoretical

possibility of good poetic translation from Russian into English.

Brodsky’s review both comments on Kunitz’s translation and lingers on the points of

divergence with Kunitz’s theory of translation which the latter unfolded in his ‘A Note on The

Translations’.268 Kunitz had written:

The poet as a translator lives with a paradox. His work must not read like a translation; conversely, it is not an exercise of the free imagination. One voice enjoins him ‘Respect the text!’ The other simultaneously pleads with him: ‘Make it new!’ …. Translation is a sum of approximations, but not all approximations are equal. …. The rendering is conscientious, but the lines are only a shadow of the original text, incapable of producing its singular pleasures. The object is to produce an analogous poem in English out of available signs and sounds, a new poem sprung from the matrix of the old, drenched in memories of its former existence … what it said, how it breathed, the inflections of its voice. The Russian poet Nikolai Zabolotski had another figure for the process. He said it was like rebuilding a city out of the evidence of its ruins.269

However poetic Kunitz’s remark may sound what it boils down to upon closer analysis

is a relativistic approach towards translation. The translator advertises his resignation right

from the start by acknowledging his inevitable defeat at producing something more than a

memory of a destroyed building or city. The demands upon him are thus reasonably lowered.

The translator’s objective, according to Kunitz, is ‘to produce an analogous poem in English.’

The key word here is ‘analogous’ - i.e. a new poem which is a substitute of the one which

265 Joseph Brodsky. “Translating Akhmatova”. The New York Review of Books, Volume 20, Number 13 (August 9, 1973), http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9770 266 Idem 267 Idem 268 Stanley Kunitz. ‘ A Note on the Translations’, Anna Akhmatova. Poems of Akhmatova/ selected, translated and introduced by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward. (Boston-Toronto: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1973) pp. 29-33. 269 Kunitz, ‘A Note on the Translations’, pp. 29-33.

93

exists as the original. Kunitz’s relativism as applied to the problem of rendition of the form of

Akhmatova’s poems leads him to the following conclusions:

Akhmatova is usually described as a formal poet, but in her later years she wrote more and more freely. Some of her poems … cannot be translated effectively without a considerable reconstruction of their architecture; others are much more fluid in their making. To insist on a universally rigid duplication of metrical or rhyming patterns is arbitrary and pointless, since the effects in any case are not mechanically transferable to another language. Instead of rhyme, our ear is often better pleased by an instrumentation of off-rhyme, assonance, consonance, and other linkages. Prosody is a manifold texture, embodying the expressive range and variety of the human voice.270

According to Kunitz, the choice of the formal equivalent for the translation is thus

quite flexible and entirely depends on the degree of the translator’s subjugation or resistance

to the aesthetic trends at hand in the target language.

Brodsky on the other hand, while admitting that Kunitz’s translation is on the whole a

success,271 at the same time completely disagrees with the idea of this arbitrariness and does

not comprehend ‘why in one case the translator attempts to preserve the structure of the

original, while in another he totally ignores it’. The main difference in Brodsky’s approach is

that he shifts the focus from the translator to the author and points out that there is a hierarchy

between the original and its translation and that the translator has before all else a number of

responsibilities towards the poet he is translating. ‘Translation is not original creation – this is

what one must remember.’ Brodsky insists, it has to deserve the right to bear the author’s

name on it. He carries on:

To translate poetry, one has to possess some art, at the very least the art of stylistic re-embodiment. This is possible when your reserve of technical skills is varied. A good example is W. H. Auden, who is capable of translating Icelandic sagas … using equivalents from the languages in which they were written.272

But in order to find metrical equivalents for a translation a poet has to be ‘capable of

using the techniques created in the original’ which, according to Brodsky, most American

poets simply no longer possess, because of their extensive use of free verse:

… the poet is simply incapable of operating within traditional metrical verse. It makes absolutely no difference what heights he has achieved with his free verse technique. What matters is that he does not possess the technique of the original; therefore his use

270 Ibid, p. 33. 271 ‘In a clear sense Akhamatova was lucky with her translator here. Stanley Kunitz turns out to be a person who is spiritually and technically qualified for the task’, Brodsky, Brodsky. Translating Akhmatova’, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9770 272 Idem

94

of his own technique in translating is not a chosen, new, manifestation of his own individuality – it is something over which he has no control.273

If the poet-translator fails to find such a formal equivalent the results, Brodsky argues,

will be ‘amateurish and jerry-built, no matter what argument in their justification’.

Accordingly analysing one of Akhmatova’s poems in Kunitz’s translation ‘Imitation from the

Armenian’ Brodsky shows that the translator had rejected metrical structure and rhymes of the

original in the hope of achieving a certain degree of freedom. What happened instead,

according to Brodsky, was a change of the meaning and that:

… the freedom turned out to be a burden and led to a certain heaviness of style: instead of the eight Russian lines we have ten English lines. And this happens despite the fact that the English words are two or three times shorter – in number of syllables – than the Russian ones. In English a line of iambic pentameter can contain up to nine words, while in Russian not more than six will fit.274

Brodsky then shows that the tendency to avoid rhymes in translations from Russian

poetry, apart from making translator’s task much easier, reflects the contemporary trends in

American poetry:

…. contemporary Russian poets use a technique which seems archaic to their American colleagues. It is not just shameful for a contemporary American poet to use rhymes, it is unthinkable. It seems banal to him; he fears banality worse than anything, and therefore he uses free-verse – though free verse is no guarantee against banality.275

The real worries and fears of a translator who is aware of his responsibilities before

the author should be of a quite different nature, says Brodsky. As any translation is always a

sacrifice his attention should be concentrated on estimating what elements of the original must

be preserved above all:

… in order to translate, one must … have some conception of not only the author’s complex of ideas, his education, and the details of his personal biography, but also his etiquette, or better the etiquette of the poetry in which the poet worked… …Then there will be no temptation to omit some things, emphasize others, use free verse where the original is in sestets, etc. That is, the translator must have not only the technical but also the spiritual experience of the original.276

In the case of Akhmatova to preserve rhyme and metre is a far more important task for

a translator, Brodsky argues, than trying to avoid ‘banality’ in the translation (in the guise of

273 Idem 274 Idem 275 Idem 276 Idem

95

rhymes): ‘Akhmatova achieved wisdom. Therefore her verse is extremely simple, restrained,

and at times, like all real wisdom, it sounds banal.’

In response to the relativism of Kunitz’s ‘Note’277 Brodsky defiantly proclaims that a

translation which not merely aspires to be a ‘memory’ or a ‘shadow’ of an original poem, but

wants to deserve the full right to have author’s name on it can indeed be attained if certain

imperatives are fulfilled:

In translation, some loss is inevitable. But a great deal can be preserved too. One can preserve the meter, one can preserve the rhymes (no matter how difficult this may seem each time), one can and must preserve the meaning. Not one of these things, but all together. Images exist, and one must follow them – and not propound fashionable theories in the introductions.278

In order to justify his remarks Brodsky adds that he had allowed himself to make them

because he considers translation ‘to be a quite serious matter.’ He also quotes Pushkin who

called translators ‘the post-horses of enlightenment.’ Brodsky takes up the metaphor of his

great predecessor and develops it further, adding with his wild brand of wit that ‘horses run as

hard as they can only when whip is whistling over them.’ The review ends with Brodsky

expressing his ambitious desire to change the insufficient state of affairs in the field of

Russian-English translations: ‘… good translations are an exception now. It is desirable – and

the sooner the better – to collect a sufficient number of exceptions to make a new rule.

Russian poetry in any case deserves this, and has a right to expect it’.

The first response to the review Translating Akhmatova came most importantly and

encouragingly for Brodsky from Stephen Spender. On the same day of the review’s

publication he wrote Brodsky a letter:

Dear Joseph, Aug, 9 1973

I am just about to start my morning’s work but before doing so I read your piece on the Kunitz-Hayward translation of Akhmatova. I really like what you say very much, also I like the whole tone of your review which is at once friendly and comprehending and severe. You have the authority to say what you say and you don’t take advantage of this authority but simply speak out of the centre of it. Your review should make people think very hard about translation. In fact I think it will have this effect and will perhaps be historic, a turning point.279

277 Kunitz, ‘A Note on the Translations’, pp. 29-33. 278 Brodsky. ‘Translating Akhmatova,’ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9770. 279 Spender, ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (Aug, 9 1973), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Folder 18.

96

This letter of approval must have been undoubtedly very important for Brodsky, for

there were no poetical authorities higher for him in the contemporary English letters than that

of Auden and Spender.280

Reading Brodsky’s next review ‘Beyond Consolation’ one cannot but notice the irony

in the context of Spender’s delicate remark, quoted above, that Brodsky didn’t take advantage

of his authority in ‘Translating Akhmatova’; for the tone of this second review, even by its

author’s own estimation, was very ‘sharp’. At the same time in ‘Beyond Consolation’

Brodsky is even more outspoken about his ideas of translation and there they crystallized into

what one might call the main postulates of how he thought a translation from Russian into

English ought to be made.

‘Beyond Consolation’ was a review of the translations of Nadezhda Mandelstam’s

memoirs as well as of three books of translations of Mandelstam’s verse. For two of them,

Complete Poetry of Osip Mandelstam translated by Burton Raffel in collaboration with

Sidney Monas281 and Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems translated by W.S. Merwin in

collaboration with Clarence Brown,282 Brodsky went into greater detail. Both books were a

result of collaboration between American poets who knew no Russian and Slavic scholars. In

his review of these translator-academic tandems Brodsky criticizes the poets and praises the

academics, at the same time chiding them for ceding the upper hand to the translators:

Saddest of all is that both Merwin and Raffel worked in collaboration with such specialists as Clarence Brown and Sidney Monas. Brown himself is the superb translator of Mandelstam’s prose (which, by the way, is the best Russian prose of this century) and the author of a monograph on Mandelstam unique in its quality. … Both Brown and Monas, however yielded the ‘right of way’ to the poets, the apparent effect of an academic inferiority complex in relation to ‘the poet’. This is especially sad in the case of Merwin, from whom more should have been expected than a translation of ‘Mandelstam into Merwin’.283

Needless to say, that to prompt such a severe attack on the part of Brodsky, all the

translations were done in free verse. The translator of the second book Complete Poetry of

Osip Mandelstam, Raffel attempted, however, to justify himself in Translator’s Preface with

the disarming confession of his limited ability: ‘Not much of the form and structure of the

280 Ann Kjellberg confirmed this impression in a conversation in the summer 2005, New York. 281 Osip Mandelstam. Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam translated by Burton Raffel with introduction and notes by Sidney Monas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973). 282 Osip Mandelstam. Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems translated by W.S. Merwin in collaboration with Clarence Brown (NY: Atheneum, 1974). 283 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Beyond Consolation’ (review), transl. Barry Rubin, The New York Review of Books, 21:1 (February 7, 1974) Accessed on May 28, 2008 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9613.

97

original is preserved, though I have sneaked in as much rhyme (often internal rhyme) as I

could manage.’284 But obviously it was not enough to ‘disarm’ Brodsky who brought down on

him the entire force of his wrath:

As for Raffel’s translations … nothing could have saved Raffel. His book of translations is scandalous and even outrageous, and Monas made a mistake when he prefaced it with his quite sound essay – which only underscores the lack of talent and sloppiness of the translations.285

The reason why Brodsky found it ‘especially sad’ in the case of Merwin was that

paradoxically enough in his youth Merwin used to write ‘immensely formal verse,

neoclassical in style.’286 None less than Auden remarked back in 1952 in his Foreword to then

24-year-old Merwin’s first collection of verse A Mask for Janus on the latter’s technical

virtuosity:

With his concern for the traditional conceptions of Western culture … Merwin combines an admirable respect for its traditions of poetic craftsmanship. His carols show how carefully he has studied Spanish versification …and …he has not been ashamed to write what are frankly technical exercises. Apart from the fact that works which set out to be exercises in technique often end by being works of art as well … the mastery of his medium through diligent practice is of incalculable value to any artist. Technique in itself cannot make a good poem, but the lack of it can spoil one. The final stanza of ‘Dictum’ shows the reward that Mr. Merwin has earned by his studies. … No one who had not previously trained himself thoroughly in the mechanics of verse could have varied so skilfully the position of the caesura from line to line, a variation on which so much of the poetic effect depends.287

But that was back in 1952. In the 1960’s Merwin had already switched to the more

fashionable free verse and explained his choice in an essay called ‘On Open Form’ (1969). In

1970 Merwin’s efforts won him a Pulitzer Prize.288 So it is quite comprehensible why

Professor Brown ‘yielded the right of way’ to the famous poet. This is what Clarence Brown

wrote in An Afterthought on the Translation:

284 Mandelstam. Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam, transl. Raffel, p. vii. 285 Brodsky. ‘Beyond Consolation’, Accessed on May 28, 2008 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9613. 286 Parini, Jay. About W.S. Merwin. Internet series Modern American Poetry: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/merwin/life.htm 287 W. H. Auden. ‘Foreword’ to W.S. Merwin. A Mask For Janus. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), pp. ix-x. 288 Parini. About W.S. Merwin. Internet series Modern American Poetry: http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/merwin/life.htm

98

We have tried to translate Mandelstam into the English that works as an instrument of poetry in our own time, and we have accepted the responsibility entailed in the fact that to translate is to change.289

Despite his wholehearted compliance with the fashionable view that free verse is ‘the

instrument of poetry in our own time,’ Brown, an Oxford professor of Russian, shows at the

same time his awareness of the complexity of Mandelstam’s original verse:

I can imagine, if only just, an English poem that might reproduce what one critic has called the cello sound’ of this or that poem by Mandelstam or some other of its effects – its rhymes, its plastic sculpture of rhythm, its tenuously resonating change-ringing on some syllabic bell, its abrupt syntactic somersaults, and all the rest. What is more, I can imagine the only audience that might, or should, appreciate this English poem: a roomful of native Russians who, with the original itself unfolding in their mind’s ear, have just enough English to collate the two, and approve the result. They would approve it, happily unaware of the exorbitant price that had been paid, and consequently as happily unable to assess its merit as an English poem of our own time. 290

It is interesting that Clarence Brown admits in the above quote the hypothetical

possibility (‘if only just’) of a ‘replica’ translation of Mandelstam’s verse into English. But

this kind of hypothetical English, according to Brown, for all its imagined musicality would

be of little value, not being written in ‘instrument of poetry of our time,’ i.e. free verse.291

Such a wholehearted compliance with the fashions of ‘our time’ accompanied by what

Brodsky considered the very scarce results of such a compliance, provoked what was

probably his most vehement attack on free verse as an instrument for the translation of the

formal verse:

Translation is a search for an equivalent, not for a substitute. Mandelstam is a formal poet in the highest sense of the word. For him a poem began with a sound, with a ‘sonorous molded shape of form’, as he himself called it. Logically, a translator should begin his work with a search for at least a metrical equivalent to the original form. … Meters in verse are kinds of spiritual magnitudes for which nothing can be substituted. They cannot even be replaced by each other, and especially not by free verse. I don’t mean that by rejecting meter in translation the translator commits sacrilege, but he is certainly deceiving the reader. … A poem is the result of a certain necessity: it is inevitable, and so is its form. 292

289 Osip Mandelstam. Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems translated by W.S. Merwin in collaboration with Clarence Brown (NY: Atheneum, 1974) p. xviii. 290 Mandelstam. Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems, p. xviii. 291 In response to ‘Beyond Consolation’ an American translator Paul Schmidt maintained, for instance, that in the contemporary American poetry ‘lack of ‘form’ is now a rigorous formal principle’. Paul Schmidt. ‘Tongue-Tied’. The New York Review of Books, 21: 8 (May 16, 1974) p. 10. 292 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Beyond Consolation’ (review) translated by Barry Rubin, The New York Review of Books, 21:1 (February 7, 1974) Accessed on May 28, 2008 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9613.

99

Form in poetry, Brodsky argues, is a result of a certain historical artistic development

(‘it is hallowed and illumined by time’). With certain poets, at certain periods and in certain

countries – as for example with Mandelstam at the beginning of the twentieth century in

Russia – form played an extremely important structural role. Far from being a decoration, in

verse of such poets form is intimately connected with content; through form poem’s

pronouncements acquire an air of inevitability. That is why an English language translator,

when translating such a poet, should look for equivalents of these original forms in his own

poetic tradition, instead of substituting it with free verse (the latter being by definition a lack

of form). If a translator fails to recognize these as imperatives, in Brodsky’s view, he shows

disregard for the source culture and ultimately kills the poet he is trying to translate:

… Form too is noble, for it is hallowed and illumined by time. It is the vessel in which meaning is cast; they need each other and sanctify each other reciprocally – it is an association of soul and body. Break the vessel, and the liquid will leak out. What was done to Mandelstam by Merwin, and to an even greater extent by Raffel, is the product of profound moral and cultural ignorance. 293

That it was after all possible to find such formal equivalents within English poetic tradition

was for Brodsky, who was so well familiar with it, a matter beyond any doubt. Brodsky’s

advice to the translators was quite straightforward: 'Translators of Mandelstam should use the

technique of the late Yeats’294 with whom Mandelstam also had much in common

thematically Brodsky suggests.

Brodsky also makes allusions to the particular position of moral arbiter which poetry

occupied in Russia, especially in the twentieth century. The resistance of Russian poetry to

new forms and its adherence to the classical ones was a result of its ‘moral purity and

firmness’ and ultimately helped it as well as its readers survive the period of historical

turmoil. Accordingly, Brodsky said, form had to be preserved in the translation, at least, as a

historical testimony to this firmness and resistance:

…Apart from her metaphors, Russian poetry has set an example of moral purity and firmness, which to no small degree has been reflected in the preservation of so-called classical form without any damage to content. Herein lies her distinction from her Western sisters, though in no way do I presume to judge whom this distinction favours most. However, it is a distinction, and if only for purely ethnographic considerations that quality ought to be preserved in translation and not forced into a common mould .…

293 Idem 294 Idem

100

Carolyn Kizer once said in jest that international legislation should be introduced to prohibit the translation of classical verse into free verse. The joke is rather bitter… But something really should be done. Russian poetry does not deserve being treated like a poor relation. The technique used to translate from Russian ought to differ, at least visually, from the technique used to translate from Swahili and Urdu. 295

In this last passage transpires Brodsky’s enormous pride in the poetical achievements

of his countrymen. Brodsky had a theory that prose was on the whole secondary to poetry: the

world-famous Russian literature of the nineteenth century owed its existence, according to

him, to the poetry which had preceded it.296 The inadequacy of the existent translations into

English prevented Russian poetry from occupying the place it deserved within the world

poetry.

Thus on the basis of these first two articles Brodsky’s demands upon a translation

from Russian into English might be summed up as follows: translation must deserve the right

to bear the name of the author. In order to do so:

1. Translation has to convey the formal structure of the original to the extent that it offers

equivalents of the compositional principles which had been involved in the creation of the

original poem such as:

• rhymes and rhyme patterns; • STANZAIC DESIGN;

• metre;

2. Translation has to convey the meaning of the original.

3. Translation is a compromise, but there are strict hierarchy of priorities as to which elements

of it can be sacrificed and which preserved. (For instance, it is illicit to sacrifice form while

translating poems of such Acmeists as Mandelstam and Akhmatova.) This unwritten balance

has to be maintained by the translator, otherwise in the process of translating the poem, he

will destroy the original poem.

In the following chapters we will see whether at all and to what degree these

translation postulates were implemented in practice, which compromises were met and

tolerated and which were not by different translators and what reaction this produced.

295 Brodsky. ‘Beyond Consolation’ Accessed on May 28, 2008 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9613. 296 See also Brodsky, ‘A Poet and Prose’, Less Than One, p. 176. ‘The concept of equality is extrinsic to the nature of art and the thinking of any man of letters is hierarchical. Within this hierarchy poetry occupies a higher position than prose, and the poet, in principle, is higher than the prose writer.’

101

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux : ‘A Part of Speech’

Meet Roger W. Straus He runs a publishing house. He’s so gentle at that that were he a cat I’d gladly serve as a mouse. A poem from a postcard from Venice (Joseph Brodsky)

It was sometime in 1975 that Nancy Meiselas, a Farrar, Straus, and Giroux employee,

introduced Brodsky to Roger Straus, the head of this famous publishing house.297 The

importance of this encounter for the phenomenon of the ‘English Brodsky’ can hardly be

overestimated.

At first Straus’s reaction was rather luke-warm (by that time FSG had already

published books by several Nobel Prize laureates). Nonetheless Straus eventually agreed to

publish a collection of verse by Brodsky. The year 1977 was marked by an important event,

which was registered in a letter from Roger Straus to Brodsky from 25 February 1977. Straus

expressed in it his pleasure that the formalities of their relationship went in order. According

to the contract, FSG agreed to publish Brodsky’s new collection A Part of Speech as well as

to arrange ‘with enthusiasm’ for the foreign editions. Since then FSG has become the sole

proprietor of the English language translations of Brodsky’s verse.298

The prelude to this event was Brodsky’s very rapid rise to relative fame in America.

As early as 1973 many prominent American magazines and newspapers, most importantly

The New Yorker (whose chief editor Howard Moss was a great supporter of Brodsky’s and a

poet of distinction himself), published several English translations of Brodsky’s verse (which

were done at this stage mostly by George Kline). Alongside the translations Brodsky gave

numerous interviews on television and to widely circulated magazines such as Vogue. In

addition to that in the first year alone in the U.S. Brodsky gave more than 30 poetry readings,

travelling to over 20 American states. At universities and colleges he would read in Russian

accompanied by an English native speaker (in the first years it was invariably again his first

translator George Kline). In order to sustain this rising popularity in American letters Brodsky

297 See also letter from Nancy Meiselas to George L. Kline from 19 September 1978: ‘Joseph is presently drawing up the final table of contents for A PART OF SPEECH , which, as you can imagine, has changed quite a bit since we first discussed the book three years ago.’ FSG archives, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, Box 41. 298 See also FSG archives, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, Box 41.

102

badly needed a book of his translations in English – his whole reputation as a poet in what

was his immediate linguistic environment depended on it.

At the time FSG was an informal publishing house where the writers would

occasionally pop by. On one such occasion Brodsky met Susan Sontag. This turned out to be

a beginning of a life-long friendship. In fact it was under Susan Sontag’s influence that Roger

Straus eventually recognized the real scope of Brodsky as a poet. From that time on Straus

became Brodsky’s ally for life and treated him with an unlimited display of his proverbial

generosity, not only organizing the publication of Brodsky’s work in English and

safeguarding Brodsky’s interests in contracts with publishing houses abroad (in Italy,

Germany, France etc.), but also sending letters of support and recommendation to various

universities and applying to various grants for Brodsky.

So at some point in 1975, shortly after Roger Straus had given his approval, the

preparations for publication of A Part of Speech started. It would be no exaggeration to call

Brodsky the father of the collection. He himself had to find and commission translators for

every single poem in it. He had to provide interlinear translations and commentaries on the

content and the prosodic structure of his verse for the translators who were not familiar with

Russian (translators like Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht, Derek Walcott etc.). Due to

Brodsky’s role and involvement in the process of translating his verse into English right from

the start and the vital importance for him of the quality of these translations the arguments of

his critics, which came recently particularly from the British quarter, who chide him for his

‘interference’, seem completely absurd. Certainly the position of Brodsky’s translators was

quite uncommon in that they were translating a living poet.

The advantages were a kind of feed-back which they could never have dreamed of

when translating a ‘dead’ poet – including explanations of unclear passages, commentaries on

the tonality of this or that passage which the author deemed important to preserve. On the

other hand their difficulty lay in the fact that the author, who spoke English and had been a

translator of poetry from Russian into English himself, held strong idiosyncratic views about

how a translation had to be done. Accordingly they had to put up with his often very high

demands, caused by the impatience of an artist involved in the process of re-emboding his

oeuvre. It was a painstaking process for the author to accept the translated version of every

single line of his verses into English. It resulted in a series of conflicts, sometimes

unnecessary, with translators and their offended egos and significantly postponed the

collections publication – its preparation took five long years from 1975 until 1980.

103

In the chapters to follow it will be possible to see what the creation of A Part of

Speech amounted to for its author, as well as to many of his English translators, in particular

Kline and Weissbort.

In Chapter Six I will introduce some extracts from the impassioned correspondence

between Brodsky and Weissbort on the translations from A Part of Speech and will analyse

the arguments of both parties. Later, I place these respective arguments in the context of

translation theory and the theory of prosody.

Appendix

Translations by George L. Kline from Joseph Brodsky: Selected poems.

I have a touch of normal classicism a and you, my dear, a bad case of sarcasm. a A woman whose career involves sales taxes B is apt to let caprice govern her life. c You’ve seen an ‘iron age’ in our present epoch. D But I had never dreamed (to change the topic) D that I, whose soberness of style was classic, B would balance on the thin edge of a knife. c (from To a Certain Poetess)

here is Brodsky’s original:

Ia zarazhon normalnym klassitsízmom. A A vy, moi drug, zarazheny sarkázmom. B Konechno, prosto sdelatsia kapríznym, A po vedomstvu aktsiznomu sluzhá. c K tomu zh, vy zvali etot vek zheléznym. D No ia ne dumal, govoria o ráznom, B chto, zarazhonnyi classitsizmom trézvym, D ya sam gulal po ostriiu nozhá. C (5-foot-iambic)

1 January 1965

The Wise Men will unlearn your name. a Above your head no star will flame. a One weary sound will be the same – a The hoarse roar of the gale. b The shadows fall from your tired eyes c

104

as your lone beside candle dies, c for here the calendar breeds nights299 c till stores of candles fail. b

1 Yanvarya 1965 goda

Volkhvy zabudut adres tvói. a Ne budet zvyozd nad golovói. a I tol’ko vetra siplyi vói a rasslyshish ty, kak vstár’. b Ty sbrosish ten’ s ustalykh pléch, c Zaduv svechu pred tem, kak léch, c poskolku bolshe dney, chem svéch, c sulit nam kalendar’. B (4-foot-iambic with occasional 3-foot-line)

From A letter in a Bottle:

Forward, it seems, is where mouth and nose a point, or where any façade is turned. b Backward would be the reverse of those. a ‘Forward’ and “backward” are shifting terms. b But since the bow of my ship points North, c the gaze of the passenger seeks the West d (and thus he is staring straight overboard); c switching his place makes it more complex. d Physicists have devised vectors which e plot a ship’s course when it’s under full sail. f Ships strung on vectors may roll and pitch. e Vectors are bodyless, like the soul. F

From Pismo v butylke:

To, kuda vytyanut nos i rót, a prochii kuda obrashchon fasád b to, veroiatno, i iest’ “vperyód”, a vsio ostal’noe schitai “nazád”. b No tak kak nos korabla na Nórd, c a vzor passazhir ustremil na Vést d (inymi slovami, gliadit za bórt), c slozhnost’ rastiot s peremenoi mést. d I tak kak chasto plyvut korablí, e na vsekh parusakh po volnam speshá, f

299 The rhyme eyes-dies-nights seems to be slightly problematic.

105

fiziki „vektor” izobrelí. e Nechto besplotnoye, kak dushá. F (4-foot-dactyl)

16 of translations display only vague hints at rhymes through assonance like in Almost

an Elegy:

In days gone by I too have waited out cold rains near columns of the Stock Exchange. And I assumed that it was God’s own gift. It may be that I was not wrong in this. I too was happy once. I lived in bond of angels. And I fought against a fierce monsters. At the main entranceway I lay in wait, like Jacob at his ladder, for a lovely girl running down the stairs but all of this has gone, vanished forever – wholly hidden.

Pochti elegiia

V bylye dni i ia perezhidál a kholodnyi dozhd’ pod kolonnadoy Bírzhi. B I polagal, chto eto – Bozhii dár. a I, mozhet byt’, ne oshibalsia. Býl zhe B i ia kogda-to schastliv. Zhil v plenú c u angelov. Khodil na vurdalákov. D Sbegavshuiu po lestnitse odnú c krasavitsu v paradnom, kak Iákov, D podsteregal.

About 20 of Mr. Kline’s translations try to preserve the metre of the original

completely sacrificing the rhymes (unrhymed pentameter). Here is one example:

You’re coming home again. What does that mean? Can there be anyone, here who still needs you, who would still want to count you as his friend? You’re home, you’ve bought sweet wine to drink with supper, and, staring out the window, bit by bit you come to see that you’re the one who’s guilty: the only one. That’s fine. Thank God for that. Or maybe one should say, ‘Thanks for small favors.’

here is the original:

Vorotish’sia na rodinu. Nu chtó zh. a

106

Gliadi vokrug, komu eshcho ty núzhen, B komu teper’ v druzia ty popadiósh? a Vorotishsia, kupi sebe na úzhin B kakogo-nibud’ sladkogo viná, c smotri v okno i dumai ponemnógu: D vo vsiom tvoia, odna tvoia viná, c i khorosho. Spasibo. Slava Bógu. D (5-foot-iambics)

107

Chapter 6: ‘A Translation: Whatever Must Be Done’

Weissbort-Brodsky: ranging practices of translation

To translate means to serve two masters – something nobody can do.

Hence, as is true of all things that in theory no one can do –

it becomes in practice everybody’s job. Everyone must translate and

everyone does translate…. The theoretical impossibility of translating can

mean to us only … that in the course of the “impossible” and necessary

compromises which in their sequence make the stuff of life, this theoretical

impossibility will give us the courage of a modesty which will then demand

of the translation not anything impossible but simply whatever must be done.

FRANZ ROSENZWEIG

Another translator who was commissioned by Brodsky to do translations for A Part of

Speech was the British poet and translator Daniel Weissbort. Being also the editor of the

London based magazine Modern Poetry in Translation, Weissbort had his own strong ideas

about translation and accordingly showed a greater resistance than other translators to

Brodsky’s ideas on the subject as well as to the changes the author was apt to make to

translated versions of his work. This resulted in a rather heated correspondence between the

poet and his translator.

The earliest of Weissbort’s letters dates back to 3 May 1974. As one can infer from its

content, Weissbort had sent Brodsky the first draft of his translation of the poem Lagoon300

and the author sent his translator a revised copy with his comments and suggestions.

Weissbort’s response to Brodsky’s comments brings into focus the most contentious issue

between the author and his various. Here is an extract from it:

To return to the translation. As I say, I’ll try to absorb your notes and to revise the version. However, I’m a little concerned that you apparently did not perceive my attempt to reproduce both metre and rhymes, which you contend have totally disappeared. 301

300 Unfortunately the original letter by Brodsky could not be found, but from the rhymes mentioned in Weissbort’s response it was possible to establish that the poem in question was indeed Lagoon. 301 Daniel Weissbort. ‘Letter to Brodsky’ (3 May 1974), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 1 Fld 23.

108

According to Brodsky, the rhymes and the metre had completely disappeared from

Weisbort’s translation. On the contrary Weissbort claimed to have preserved the metre. As for

the rhyme scheme, he had replaced the precise, or ‘strong’, rhymes of the Russian original

with rhymes in English ‘based on sound or vowel equivalence’ and occasionally consonantal

rhymes which, though not having the force, by his own admission, of their Russian

counterparts, were, he argued, ‘more appropriate in English’:

I had thought I’d done rather better than visual rhymes. It’s a pity I couldn’t have been there to read you the translation. The type of rhyme I have been using more and more in translating Russian poetry is the one based on sound, or vowel equivalence. Occasionally I use consonantal rhymes. These do not have the force of the Russian strong rhymes of course, but in my view are more appropriate in English. The aa bccb scheme does not make it more difficult, though I suppose with my kind of oblique or half and quarter rhyming, it does render it more difficult to perceive the rhyme. Let me give you a few instances of this rhyming. Stanza III: chime (a)/ lives (a) / chandelier (b) / duckweed (c) / with (c) / tears (b); Stanza IV: wind (a)/ brim (a) / is (b) / guard (c) / star (c) / rays (b). I don’t invariably rhyme, but usually do – in this way. Also I have kept to the rhythm broadly. Does this totally fail to come across?302

One realises that from the point of view of Brodsky, as it can be inferred from his

theoretical pronouncements in ‘Translating Akhmatova’ and ‘Beyond Consolation’ quoted in

Chapter Four, there was at least one flaw in Weissbort’s argumentation in the letter above.

Weissbort affirmed that he had devised and had been using a special metrical equivalent for

translating poetry from Russian. In the meantime, Russian has all sorts of metres – a metrical

equivalent utilized for a poem in iambic pentameter is not automatically bound to meet the

requirements for a translation of a poem written in, let us say, dactyl or anapaest, not to

mention a loose dolnik. One can say, that in terms of the Russian tradition of poetic

translation, Brodsky shares Pushkin’s position, whereas Weissbort that of Batyushkov and

Zhukovsky (See Chapter Three), for whom the relation between the form of the original and

that of the translation had not yet became so absolute.

These differences in the respective conceptions of translations entertained by Brodsky

and Weissbort were exacerbated when it came to the translation of the cycle ‘A Part of

Speech’ – the cycle from which the collection as a whole took its name. This ‘battle over

translation’ found its form in an epistolary dispute. This dispute represents for us a vivid

example of Brodsky’s occasional ‘diplomatic’ difficulties in dealing with the translators he

commissioned for A Part of Speech. More importantly, however, while defending the changes

302 Idem

109

he had made to the translations, Brodsky’s responses may also eventually provide us with

greater insight into the real, artistic motives behind those changes.

Weissbort-Brodsky: ‘chinwag’ over translation

In the course of the preparations of the collection A Part of Speech Brodsky several

times commissioned different ‘hands’ for the translation of a single poem. With the benefit of

hindsight this practice might seem slightly unscrupulous. Back then, however, it was dictated

by the publishing expediency rather than by any ill-will on the part of the author. After all

Brodsky was the one who had signed the contract with Farrar, Strauss and Giroux and

accordingly was fulfilling the contractual deadlines.303 In fact George Kline confirms that all

of the translation revisions were always done under considerable time constraints with the

idea of meeting the deadlines. Besides asking a translator did not always translate into a

successful final result. Often the translators did not find enough time or skill to cope with a

particular translation.

And yet whatever Brodsky’s reasons might be behind this practice of encouraging

several co-translators at the time to do the same translation led on many occasions to many

unnecessary conflicts, as is readily understandable.

Indeed, in case of the cycle ‘A Part of Speech’, despite the fact that Weissbort’s

translation had already been published in the magazine ‘Poetry’ in March 1978, Brodsky

asked Alan Myers, another of his translators and a friend, to do the ‘job’ as well. In the end,

however, Myers’ translations did not manage to convince Brodsky entirely. Thus at some

point around November 1979 while reading the galley proofs of the collection A Part of

Speech, Brodsky decided to stick with Weissbort’s translations despite his initial misgivings.

This was, however, not done before first having substantially revised them. Presented with the

results of the fait accompli Daniel Weissbort was quite outraged, which found its outlet in a

series of emotional letters. In the letter below Weissbort raises the whole issue of authorship

of a translation. While recognizing Brodsky as the indisputable proprietor of the original

poem, Weissbort still accuses him of using Weissbort’s translation as material for his own

English version. At the same time Weissbort himself admits that the result was after all ‘rather

good’. Here are some extracts from the first letter:

303 George L. Kline suggested to me, for example, in our private correspondence in August 2007 that ‘ALL of … [Brodsky’s] revisions were undertaken in a rush to meet impending publishing deadlines.’

110

26 November 1979 (Letterhead: University of Iowa)

Dear Joseph,

First, on reflection, it was utterly within your rights to do what you did about the translation. …. My objection to the whole affair has to do with “friendship”. In my view you acted with a high-handed disregard of pretty basic rules, at least as I see them…. … you have not really re-done the translation; you have strung it together – quite effectively – using lines and hints from my versions and … from that of other people, who unbeknown to me, you had evidently; (contrary to the quite clear understanding I had from you that I was “commissioned” to translate this poem) engaged in trying their hands too. The result of your efforts strikes me as a rather good finally (with some criticisms which I could but will not, at this stage, make) but there is a simple morality involved here. I feel that you ought to make it clear in your introduction or whatever exactly how you arrived at a version, which though the original poem, the Russian, is obviously yours, does not wholly belong to you. None of this would matter much, of course, except that I feel it shows a cavalier disregard for others’ feelings on your part and I do have some trouble with that.304

The most contentious issue of the letter above is the question of ownership.

Translation theory must have played a much more prominent role for Weissbort, an editor of

the magazine on translation, than for Brodsky. And yet Walter Benjamin seems to resolve this

issue of ownership in favour of the author. As was shown in the Chapter Three, translations of

the works that have reached their fame do not so much serve the original as owe their

existence to them. A quote from Benjamin would be quite apropos:

Übersetzungen, die mehr als Vermittlungen sind, entstehen, wenn im Fortleben ein Werk das Zeitalter seines Ruhmes erreicht hat. Sie dienen daher nicht sowohl diesem, wie schlechte Übersetzer es für ihre Arbeit zu beanspruchen pflegen, als dass sie ihm ihr Dasein verdanken.305 (Italics mine, Z.I.)

Benjamin seems to highlight the question of who is actually the beneficiary of a

translation of a famous work of art. Thus one might observe that at the time of A Part of

Speech Brodsky’s fame in America was already considerable. Thus Weissbort by translating

Brodsky already at the time in question was furthering his own personal career, at least to the

same degree, as he was contributing to the promotion of the poet. The fame of the original

preceded the act of translation. On the other hand, Brodsky, a living poet participating in a

complicated process of the re-embodiment of his works had the full right to interfere, for the

translated poem had to present nothing less than his own poetic physiognomy before the

English speaking readers.

304 Weissbort. ‘Letter to Brodsky’ (26 November 1979), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 54. 305 Walter Benjamin. ‚Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’, Gesammelte Scriften, IV/ i, Herausg. Tillman Rexroth (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981) p. 11.

111

In his second letter, which followed three days later and was not less passionate than

the first one, Weissbort no longer remained as positive about the fact that what Brodsky had

done to the translations had actually been an improvement:

Dear Joseph, 29 November 1979

…. I’m afraid I cannot even look at these versions … I’m tired of commenting – apart from saying that it is my humble opinion that though you have done a lot of it yourself, you do not really understand translations and that you are certainly not plugged into what I try to do when I aim at a translation to stand for a certain original. I realize Derek Walcott is currently in your pantheon and as for my humble self, well even at the best I will never I think, produce the kind of poetry which will really do much for you and, being a Russian, you tend to look at things absolutely – i.e. if I am not your kind of poet, nor can I be your kind of translator.

It is my work, subtly (or unsubtly) depending on your point of view, changed. They are only translations but still had a certain dynamic working for them in their pristine state, which has now been distorted.306

In this second letter the enraged translator claimed that Brodsky, despite his wide

experience in translation, actually did not ‘really understand translations’, i.e. did not

understand Weissbort’s translating conception oriented as it was on the norms and trends of

the target language. (Some years later, in 1982 the wounded translator repeated this opinion in

a public discussion of Tsvetayeva’s translations on the pages of NYRB: ‘…Joseph Brodsky

…often fails to ‘hear’ part or half rhymes in English translations of his work, though there is

no disputing his mastery of Russian prosody.’)307

Weissbort also refers to certain Russian maximalism of Brodsky in sticking so

unrelentingly to the formal elements in the translation just because, Weissbort thinks, they

played an important part in his original verse. Weissbort also accuses Brodsky of bias against

him as a translator, because as a poet Weissbort writes wrote free verse.

Finally Weissbort reiterates the issue of the translation’s ownership: Weissbort

believed that his translations for what they were were after all works of art, i.e. displayed ‘a

certain dynamic working for them’.

To this Brodsky answered with a rather longish letter in which he presented his

counter-arguments. The tone of the letter is not less emotional than of the one by Weissbort.

Brodsky explains Weissbort that he did not mean to hurt him and that he himself is now hurt

306 Weissbort. ‘Letter to Brodsky,’ Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 54. 307 Daniel Weissbort, ‚Battle Over Translation’ [Reply by David McDuff], The New York Review of Books, 29:14 (September 23, 1982) p. 12.

112

by Weissbort’s misinterpretation of his intentions. Brodsky ascribes Weissbort’s reaction to

the latter’s excessive degree of identification with the translation. Brodsky, on the other hand

believes that a translation can be eternally altered:

Dec. 3, 1979, New York

Dear Danny,

…. Your letters hurt, and they hurt unjustly. To say the least, more unjustly than what prompted them did hurt you, if only because that I didn’t mean to offend you with my redoing those poems. I simply didn’t expect you to react with such a gravity to the things which I regarded as simple alterations; and this is where your questioning of our friendship comes from, I presume: I failed to comprehend the degree of your commitment to and identification with the work you’ve done. It’s merely because I used to treat any translation, including those done by me as something utterly provisional. I.e., to say the least, as something that can always be improved. Or worsened, you may say. To detect something personal, therefore, a cavalier attitude, reshuffling my poetic pantheon with no room for you in it, etc. is to misinterpret my motives in a too elaborate way, for they are really simple.308

What is of particular interest in this apology of Brodsky is the assertion that a

translation is something provisional which can always be improved upon. Later in the same

letter Brodsky repeats this idea: ‘More than a poem, to paraphrase Valery, a translation is

never finished: it’s simply abandoned.’309

In fact it must be mentioned here that Brodsky generally believed in editing. For

instance, we know that he went over the translations of Cavafy into Russian in order to string

them together: ‘ustervit′ 310’, as he put it in Russian.

Similar editing took place not only of translations, but also of original poems by

others. As reported by Barry Rubin, who was present at the meeting between Brodsky and

Vladimir Vyssotsky, Russia’s then most famous songwriter, Brodsky went over the original

poems of Vysotsky cancelling lines which in Brodsky’s view did not sound right. This editing

took place in Vysotsky’s presence during his stay at famous Russian ballet dancer

Baryshnikov’s house in New York in 1978. According to the first hand testimony of

Sumerkin and Rubin respectively, neither Shmakov nor Vysotsky visibly protested against

Brodsky’s revisions. Both of them were grateful to Brodsky for the changes he made to their

respective versions, recognizing the latter’s superiority as the poet in their mutual mother

308. Joseph Brodsky ‘Letter to Daniel Weissbort’ (3 December 1979), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 33. 309 Idem 310 Quoted from “O skorbi i razume” (‘On grief and reason’) the unpublished version of Brodsky’s obituary by Alexandr Sumerkin, February 1996.

113

tongue, Russian. On the other hand, Weissbort’s English native-speaker ego understandably

enough refused to accept the superiority of someone for whom English was his second

language – even if this someone was a great poet in his native Russian.

(Incidentally, it seems curious that Brodsky’s idea of editing had some typically

Russian roots; Brodsky showed a strong affinity with the Russian XVIII century poets and

may have had in mind their practice of continuous “improvements” of translations of others,

which were mentioned in the Chapter Three. As shown by a famous Pushkin scholar Vatsuro,

Similar practice was also in vigour among the members of the poetic society ‘Arzamas’,

which counted Gnedich, Zhukovsky, Batyushkov, Pushkin, and Vyazemskii among its

members. Commenting on the changes Pushkin and Vyazemskii allegedly made to the initial

draft of Batyushkov’s translation of the stanza CLXXVIII from the Fourth Canto of Childe

Harold’s Pilgrimage by Lord Byron, Vatsuro writes:

It [this translation] represents a monument of „Arzamassian“ collective creation, a cultural phenomenon peculiar of a certain epoch of literary consciousness – an epoch which we define as ‘Pushkin’s epoch.’ 311 )

In the next part of his response Brodsky gives his reasons for having recast

Weissbort’s translations. Brodsky at first alludes to the fact that prior to that moment his

insufficient English had prevented him from coming up with alternative translation versions.

Now that his English has improved, as can also be seen from the letter, and he had found time

enough to go through the galleys, Brodsky discovered not so much the defects of the

translation done by the others, as the possibility to easily improve upon these defects:

I didn’t bother ever to read translations of my stuff closely. Neither at the time of George Kline’s “Selected”, nor when they were appearing later in the magazines. Partly, because I can’t take seriously the old poems (either in Russian or in English), partly because whenever I’d look at a translation I always found enough reasons to climb walls, mostly however because I never had time or English for coming up with alternatives. If one can’t improve things, he better quit brooding, and I never did. Besides, the standards in today’s American letters are lowered enough to be applauded for mere semblances. Why should one mind sounding like some pentametered Bill Merwin or meek Ted Hughes. I didn’t, and on the whole I don’t even now, for I have my originals. If I got to rework some translation in this forthcoming collection (not yours only, but also Rigsbee’s, Kline’s, Myer’s and others, although I imagine that for you it’s of no consequence, and rightly so), it’s not because that I got to aspire for a higher spot on the local Parnassus, but because I’ve been given the galleys and found

311 V. E. Vatsuro. Zapiski kommentatora [Commentator’s notes] (Sankt-Peterburg: ‘Akademicheskii proekt’, 1994), p. 165. Here is the original quote: « Он [перевод] остается памятником «арзамасского» сотворчества, культурным феноменом, характерным для совершенно определенной эпохи литературного сознания, который мы определяем как «пушкинскую эпоху».

114

enough time to read them. What I’ve found was often disagreeable and objectionable. That, in itself, wasn’t a big surprise. What has surprised me really is that some of them could be easily remedied (or worsened, as you may say again).312

In the quotation above Brodsky mentions the names of Bill Merwin and Ted Hughes.

Brodsky associated with these poets the trend among English language poets to translate

poetry from other languages in English using ‘loose’ verse metres and ‘weak’ rhymes, i.e.

practically into unrhymed free verse. The fact that verse libre constituted a poetical norm in

America was for Brodsky tantamount to the declaration of its decay, as also pointed out by

Czesław Miłosz:

… Joseph Brodsky was immune to the whole Whitman tradition of poetry. For him, Frost was the greatest American poet.313

Once again we have the proof that rhymes and verse metre were for Brodsky the

essential and the most important elements of his originals to be preserved in translation. His

ability to find in English more precise rhymes than those proposed by his translators must

have given him the impression that the translations after all ‘could be easily remedied’.

In the next passage from the letter above Brodsky names the main motives behind his

constant search for rhymes. Brodsky refers to the effect of inevitability of poetic statement

which he associated with the use of precise rhymes both in Russian and in English. The poet

maintains that as none of his co-translators shared his belief in the importance of this

‘inevitability effect’, it was solely his duty to rework the translations so as to achieve it:

And here we are getting to the hub of the whole problem. It’s not that I believe meters and rhymes being sacred, but I’d rather look trite than slack. Given that (which has more to do, I suppose, with psychology than with aesthetics), it’s small wonder that one decides to redress things, for better or worse. I think that the cited above principle holds equally well with writing in English as it does with things done in Russian. And I felt that by now, once I was capable to acknowledge the pitfalls, I have an additional responsibility – that to the English language. Pathetic as it may sound, I feel that way; and besides, where or to whom could I turn for help. You’ve said that yourself on a number of occasions that you’d rather not try this or that poem again. So did Alan [Myers], and as for Rigsbee, I’d hardly talk to him at all. In other words, it took me these seven years to realise that I am on my own not only in terms of accuracy of those translations, but also in the sense of their linguistic dignity.314

312 Brodsky ‘Letter to Daniel Weissbort,’ Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 33. 313 Milosz. Conversations,. 190. 314 Brodsky ‘Letter to Daniel Weissbort’ (3 December 1979), Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 33.

115

Brodsky is making above a very surprising point in the light of the criticism that

accused him of ‘un-Englishness’. According to Brodsky, what prompted his recastings of the

translations done by others was his sense of responsibility towards the English language.

What Brodsky is referring here to by talking of the rhymes being ‘slack’ is the quality of

Weissbort’s ‘kind of oblique or half and quarter rhyming’. 315 Because of the alleged

imprecision of Weissbort’s rhymes, his translations lack, in Brodsky’s view, the effect of

inevitability of the poetic message.

If Brodsky only asserted the existence of such an effect in poetry and its connection to

the use of formal prosodic devices, Auden gives us a greater insight into the precise

mechanisms which bring it about in poetry. Auden maintains that one of the consequences of

the formal devices in serious poetry is that it creates the impression that the content itself is to

dictate the form in which they are embodied. It is in fact exactly this practice of conveying the

sensation that the statements cast in a poetic form are not coincidental:

In the process of composition, as every poet knows, the relation between experience and language is always dialectical, but in the finished product it must always appear to the reader to be a one-way relationship. In serious poetry thought, emotion, event, must always appear to dictate the diction, meter and rhyme in which they are embodied; vice versa, in comic poetry it is the words, meter, rhyme which must appear to create the thoughts, emotions and events they require.316

In this quality of the poetic statements to seem ‘inevitable’ when they appear in a

shape of a perfect form also lies some danger. The poet might choose to abuse his art and to

pass as ‘inevitable’ statements which are false as in cases of Yeats, Brecht or Mayakovsky.

On the other hand, as Auden suggests in another passage in which he described the role of

rhyme and other metrical devices in poetry, in order to achieve the desired effect the poet has

to be a master of these devices and not their servant:

Rhymes, meters, stanza-forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is just enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunken and dishonest.317

315 Weissbort. ‘Letter to Brodsky’ (3 May 1974), Beinecke, Box 1 Fld 23. 316 W.H. Auden. ‘Introduction’ to Selected Poetry and Prose of Byron. Quoted in Anthony Hecht. The Hidden Law: the poetry of W.H. Auden (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993) p. 174. 317 W.H. Auden. ‘Squares and Oblongs’, The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Vol. II, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002) p. 344.

116

Paraphrasing Auden’s metaphor we can say that Brodsky accused Weissbort of having

failed to show his ‘mannerly’318 authority (in purely intellectual terms, of course) by taking

recourse to the imprecise rhymes.

In the passage of the letter to follow Brodsky suggests further implications of this

effect of inevitability of poetic statements. According to Brodsky, the whole use of metre and

rhyme was not so much an aesthetic issue, as an ethical one:

You may laugh at the latter; but if you will laugh too loud, I’ll show you enough lines that held together by the power of ink only. Please, Danny, understand me properly: I don’t dispute your notions of poetic technique. As far as I am concerned, it’s extremely strong (your means, that is as they are manifested in these translations), but often it lacks that element (or device) which creates the sense of the inevitability of the statement. Sometimes, to me there is too much of this “take-it-or-leave-it”. And it’s not that I am afraid of being “left”: I simply believe that this attitude on the whole is cowardly. I understand that this is what the poetic idiom in English has come to, but it’s simply not my cup of Earl Grey. Nor do I think that today is the last day of writing in English.319

As follows from the last sentence of the above quote, Brodsky believed in a return to

using formal poetic devices in English poetry. Brodsky seems to suggest that in his

reworkings of Weissbort’s translations he was no more than anticipating such an aesthetic

‘restoration’. The whole passage above reiterates the same point that Brodsky had made in his

review on Richard Wilbur about the ‘moral inferiority’ of the verse libre. As opposed to free

verse, writing formal verse, according to Brodsky, requires not only more skills of the poet

and offers in return greater aesthetic possibilities; it also represents a form of resistance to

chaos. As such it demands more courage from the poet:

In my opinion a regular meter and exact rhymes shaping an uncomfortable thought are far more functional than any form of free verse. Because in the former case the reader gets a sense of chaos being organized. From what one could call a moral point of view, the former is more important than the latter. Even in the event that it is not organization, but nothing more than a form of resistance to chaos. For in the physical world only resistance is possible.320

Brodsky believed that Russian poetry had shown such resistance and demonstrated

courage precisely through its fidelity to the classical forms – having probably in mind

Akhmatova and Mandelstam. This confirms also Brodsky’s friend German writer Hans

Christoph Buch:

318 ‘When Speech was mannerly, an Art,/ Like learning not to belch or fart:/ I cannot settle, which is worse/ The Anti-Novel or Free Verse.’ Quoted from a poem ‘Doggerel by a Senior Citizen’ by W.H. Auden. 319 Brodsky ‘Letter to Daniel Weissbort’ (3 December 1979), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 33. 320 Brodsky, “On Richard Wilbur,’ p. 18.

117

Brodskys Ziel war von Anfang an nicht die Zertrümmerung der Form wie in der westlichen Avantgarde, sondern die Wiederherstellung des Reichtums der überlieferten Kunst und Literatur in einem durchaus klassizistischen Sinn. Das bedeutete zugleich eine Kampfansage gegen den totalitären Staat, dessen lähmendem Zugriff sich die russischen Dichter seiner Generation zu entziehen versuchten – nicht durch politischen Protest, sondern durch ästhetische Verweigerung.321

Hence, according to Brodsky, there would also be a ‘moral’ reason for retaining form

in translation from Russian:

…Apart from her metaphors, Russian poetry has set an example of moral purity and firmness, which to no small degree has been reflected in the preservation of so-called classical form without any damage to content. Herein lies her distinction from her Western sisters… ….it is a distinction, and if only for purely ethnographic considerations that quality ought to be preserved in translation and not forced into a common mould .… Russian poetry does not deserve being treated like a poor relation. The technique used to translate from Russian ought to differ, at least visually, from the technique used to translate from Swahili and Urdu. 322

Thus, this slightly outmoded idea so dear to Brodsky, according to which it is

necessary to resist the modern, seems to me to be crucial for the understanding of one of the

driving motives behind his active involvement in self-translation. Derek Walcott recognized

this resistance against the modern:

This is why he [Brodsky] has made himself such an ample poet; one feels that he has written these many poems, most of them very long, because they serve as a bulwark, a fortress against the modern.323

Finally, Brodsky himself articulated this idea in a letter he wrote to his long-standing

friend and editor of the magazine Zvezda Yakov Gordin in the summer of 1988. The letter

concerned Brodsky’s first official publications in Russia during the period of perestroika:

Our current task is the task of our entire generation. [Once we go] no one else is going to take it up for us, for the concept of “civilisation” exists just for us. As the things seem to stand, the next generation is not going to care about such issues. They will care only about themselves, and only in terms of their self-interests and not in terms of their individuality. It is this latter that we have to give them the means to preserve. Only we can give them that – we who until recently used to be so ignorant ourselves…. Poetry is possibly the only spanner which one can throw in this ever-accelerating

321 Hans Christop Buch. ‘Nachmittag eines Nobelpreisträgers: Begegnung mit Joseph Brodsky’ , Übung mit Meistern. (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1996) pp. 90-91. 322 Brodsky. ‘Beyond Consolation’ Accessed on May 28, 2008 http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9613. 323 Walcott. ‘Magic Industry’, p. 6.

118

wheel; therefore our task is of almost anthropological importance: if not to stop, then at least to slow down the advancement of the chart…324 (Transl. Z.I.)

That Brodsky should feel similarly towards what was going on in English poetry only

reflects his special love for the language and its literature. That is why in the last sentence of

the passage from the letter to Weissbort quoted above Brodsky defiantly proclaimed that it

was not as yet the ‘last day of writing in English.’

It is evident that the poet and his translator had quite different plains of regard. While

Weissbort seemed to be simply translating from Russian as he thought was best possible at his

age; Brodskyattempted to influence the future developments of the poetic trends in the

English language itself. In this respect as well Brodsky seems to reflect the heritage of the

XIX century Russian poetry, thus Etkind:

During the epoch of Pushkin – i.e., the first third of the XIX century – poets translated a lot. They did so, however, only in accordance with their proper artistic tastes and necessities. In translating Voltaire, Parny, Chegnier Pushkin and Baratynsky did not intend to enlighten anyone. The visitors of St. Petersburg and Moscow salons read in French more willingly and with greater ease than they did in Russian. Translations were supposed to highlight the possibilities of the Russian poetic language, widen the range of their own poetics as well as expand the general cultural context for the Russian literature. (Transl. Z.I.) 325

Just as Pushkin and Baratynsky among others tried to widen the horizons of Russian

poetry in terms of both the cultural reference as well as by introducing into Russian poetry

new poetic devices, Brodsky strove to accomplish a similar service for his adoptive English

language poetry.

324 Quoted in Iakov Gordin, „Nashe delo – pochti antropologicheskoe“: Preface to Iosif Brodskii, V ozhidanii varvarov: Mirovaya poeziya v perevodakh Iosifa Brodskogo [Waiting for the Barbarians: World Poetry in translations of Joseph Brodsky], (St. Petersburg: Zvezda Magazine, 2001), p. 5. The original quote runs as follows: «Нынешнее дело – дело нашего поколения; никто его больше делать не станет, понятие «цивилизация» существует только для нас. Следующему поколению, судя по всему, не до этого: только до себя, и именно в смысле шкуры, а не индивидуальности. Вот это-то последнее и надо дать им какие-то средства сохранить; и дать их можем только мы, вчера еще такие невежественные... Изящная словесность, возможно, единственная палка в этом набирающем скорость колесе, так что наше дело – почти антропологическое: если не остановить, то хоть притормозить подводу...». 325 Efim G. Etkind (Ed.), “Introductory essay” to Mastera poeticheskogo perevoda: XX vek (Masters of poetic translation: XXth century), (Sankt-Peterburg: Gumanitarnoe agenstvo “Akademicheskii proekt”, 1997) p. 6. Here is the original quote: «В пушкинское время – первую треть XIX века – поэты переводили много, но только то, что отвечало вкусу и творческим надобностям каждого из них. ... Переводя Вольтера, Парни и Шенье, Пушкин и Баратынский не собирались никого просвещать: посетители петербургских и московских салонов и театров по-французски читали охотнее и лучше, нежели по-русски. Переводы были призваны высветить возможности русского поэтического языка, расширить диапозон собственного творчества поэтов и общекультурный контекст русской литературы. »

119

This kind of unheard of audacity could not possibly be taken well by his critics. Not

only did Brodsky ‘dare’ undertake changes in the translations in his second language, but he

also ventured to think he could influence the literary development of the English language

through the practice of his translations in it. This explains much of the animosity that was

later directed at him. What his critics failed to appreciate, however, was that Brodsky’s motifs

were quite selfless. Far from willing to compete with them aspiring for ‘a higher spot on the

local Parnassus’, whatever Brodsky did, he did it for the sake of poetry.

Paradoxically enough such presumption on the part of Brodsky was not altogether

unreasonable, as suggested by Miłosz:

Brodsky and myself stand together and choose to differ from certain Modernist poets …. [G]iven the state of Western poetry at present, Brodsky and I may well be considered to be lingering in the rear guard, but really we may be the avant-garde. That’s something you just never know, because if we poets work hard at it then we can change the direction in which poetry is headed.326

Towards the end of the long letter to Weissbort Brodsky reiterates that the main reason

behind his reworkings was not so much his love of his Russian texts, but rather his love for

the English language:

I think that the main problem between us is not so much the aesthetics but that you never dealt with an author who has this kind of attitude to the language, who was so opinionated. I am not a Swede or a Hungarian who, for all their knowledge of the language into which they are translated, would wave the whole thing up believing that the lads know better and that the modernism means looseness of form, etc. 327

In the passage above Brodsky identified his own attitude towards English-language

literature – unique in a foreigner– as the main reason for his disagreements with Weissbort

over translation. His love of the English language and his profound knowledge of its literature

convinced Brodsky that ‘being modern’ was not tantamount to writing in unrhymed free

verse. In that respect Brodsky seemed to be defiantly willing to continue in the vein of Auden,

as we can find from a description by Edward Mendelson:

In the …year, 1939, Eliot looked sadly back at the triumphs of modernism, and saw in them “rather the last efforts of an old world, than the first struggles of the new.” In the midst of these triumphs, before modernism began its manifest decline, Auden was exuberantly at work writing in ways that modernism insisted were impossible.

…The poets of modernism felt they could bring tradition into the present only as battered ironic fragments, or by heroic efforts to make it new. For Auden it had never

326 Milosz.: Conversations, p. 189. 327 Brodsky ‘Letter to Daniel Weissbort’ (3 December 1979), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 33.

120

grown old…. Where modernism had used innovative forms to speak of historical necessity, Auden … adopted traditional forms to speak of freedom and choice …328

It is precisely in the relation to this Audenesque, and not only Pushkinian as was said

above, tradition that Brodsky sees himself as a guardian of the English language, as he further

explained to Weissbort:

If anything really upsets me, it is not the distortion of this or that passage but a really cavalier disrespect for the English language. I repeat: I don’t care for mistakes so much, I don’t care that my line doesn’t scan well; but the point is that it’s not my line: it’s the line in English.329

To Weissbort, for whom Brodsky’s revisions represented nothing but the application

of ‘foreign standards’ to English translation, this argumentation above must have seemed

rather paradoxical.

Concluding the letter Brodsky turns the whole issue of ‘ownership’ upside down in

reassuring his translator that after the author’s revisions Weissbort will not have to be

ashamed of his name being attached to them: ‘the only thing I can assure you of regarding this

book is that the things in it to which your name is going to be attached, won’t make you

feeling (Sic.) ashamed.’330

Brodsky’s main arguments

At this stage I propose a summary of the main arguments of Brodsky on the subject of

his translations as they were presented in the course of his dispute with Weissbort:

Translation is something that can always be altered;

Translating standards in English language poetry have been lowered to attempt mere semblances; Brodsky, on the other hand, strives for equivalents;

Slack rhymes and loose metre are cowardly, because they make poetical statements appear easily retractable and do not convey the sense of inevitability which goes with the rhymes;

What Brodsky does in translation is dictated by his love of the English language and its poetic tradition. Modernism does not mean ‘looseness of form’. To think this is to show disrespect for the English language and its future.

328 Edward Mendelson. „Introduction“, Early Auden, (New York: The Viking Press, 1981) pp. xiv-xx. 329 Brodsky ‘Letter to Daniel Weissbort’ (3 December 1979), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 33. 330 Idem

121

Despite Brodsky’s efforts to argue his position, he failed to entirely convince Weissbort of the

necessity or legitimacy of the changes he had undertaken to the latter’s translation versions.

Weissbort thought that Brodsky in presenting his arguments did not take enough heed of the

historical trends and theories of poetic translations:

In general, he [Brodsky] asserted rather than argued and had little inclination to put the assertions into a historical or translational perspective, let alone give due considerations to the counter-arguments.331

In order to adjudicate the dispute between Brodsky and Weissbort we should first turn

our attention to the work of the famous Russian metrician Victor Zhirmunsky Teoria Stikha

(A Verse Theory) – a cornerstone in the prosodic studies in the twentieth century. In his book

Zhirmunsky arrived at a comparative-historic theory of both metre and rhyme. Zhirmunsky’s

theory should help us to place both Brodsky’s and Weissbort’s arguments in some theoretical

perspective.

The Theory of Metre and Rhyme: Anglo-Russian similarities and

contrasts

Russian-English similarities: verse metre as compositional principle

‘…whatever else it may be, a poem is a verbal artefact which must be as skilfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.’(Wystan Hugh Auden) 332

In 1986 in his ‘Foreword’ to An Age Ago: a Selection of Nineteenth-Century Russian

Poetry, translated by his friend and co-translator Alan Myers, Brodsky wrote the following:

…young though Russian poetry was a century ago, metrically, to say the least, it was as mature as her Western sisters. If the music of some of these poems sounds familiar, it is not because Mr. Alan Myers did not know better but because meters are meters no matter the language in which they are employed. That is what they are meters for.333

For anyone who has even the slightest notion of the existing metrical contrasts

between Russian and English, Brodsky’s affirmation above that ‘meters are meters no matter

331 Daniel Weissbort. ‚Something like his own language’ (review), URL http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr14/reviews/weissbort.html accessed 18 Jun. 07. 332 W. H. Auden, ‘Foreword’ to Andrei Voznesenky. Antiworlds: bilingual edition of verse. (New York: Bacic Books, INC., 1967) p. vi. 333 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Foreword’ to Alan Myers (ed. & trans.). An Age Ago: A Selection of Nineteenth-Century Russian Poetry. (London: Penguin, 1989) p. xviii.

122

the language they are employed’ will sound slightly mind-boggling. What was, however,

evident to Brodsky from his first hand practice of writing poetry and doing translations, was

the underlying similarity of metrical devices in both English and Russian in their function as

compositional principles.

Viktor Zhirmunsky and his theory

In the 1920s, when comparing similar metrical phenomena in Russian, English,

German, Italian and French languages, Victor Zhirmunsky discovered that the main

significance of both metre and rhyme in poetry is their ‘function as compositional

principles.’334

Any speech is organized, argues Zhirmunsky, according to a certain pattern of

distribution in certain sequences. The manner of this distribution varies depending on the task

which this distribution is trying to fulfil. In poetry, an art form working with words, the

rhythmical law is realized in a kind of uniform distribution of weak and strong syllables

organized in phonetic sequences which repeat themselves. The law of alternation of these

syllables is expressed in a certain metrical scheme:

What we call composition is an artistically regular distribution of certain material in space and time. For the art forms which work with static material in space the main principle of spatial composition are in a broader sense of the word the laws of symmetry. For the art forms for which the change in time serves as their material the main principle of artistic regularity in time is the rhythm. In fact, the distribution of strong and weak syllables in a certain sequence within poetic speech is the foundation of the compositional structure of any poem; these, in a narrow sense, metrical elements represent, so to speak, a compositional framework of the poetical speech. (Translation Z.I.)335

A metrical scheme is an ideal scheme, for the real rhythm of a poem deviates from it;

as elsewhere in art regularity never becomes a mathematically correct law. But we perceive

the main task expressed in a metrical scheme as a main movement or ‘impulse’ in a number of

334 Victor Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory] p. 240. 335 Ibid., p. 426. Original quote: ‚Композицией называется художественно закономерное распределение какого бы то ни было материала в пространстве или во времени. Для искусств, работающих с неподвижным в пространстве материалом, основным принципом пространственной композиции являются законы симметрии в широком смысле слова. Для искусств, материалом которых служит изменение во времени, основным принципом художественной закономерности во времени является ритм. Распределение сильных и слабых звуков стихотворной речи в определённой ритмической последовательности есть основа композиционного строения всякого стихотворения; эти в узком смысле слова метрические элементы образуют как бы композиционный остов поэтической речи’.

123

verse lines seen as an entire body, despite the deviations from it which invariably occur in

some disparate lines:

The presence of a metrical scheme in verse is perceived by the reader as the inertia of rhythm […]. …. The presence of a metrical law in our consciousness is proved by the fact that every metrically strong syllable, even though it bears no stress in actuality, is for us stressed in principle. … Only the presence of the metrical law converts the neutral alternation of prose stresses into poetic rhythm […]. And so, without metre there is no rhythm …336

The same idea of the existence of tension between the inertia of the given metrical

scheme and the real rhythm of a poem was also pointed out by Frost:

I puzzled over it many years and tried to make people see what I meant. They use the word “rhythm” about a lot of free verse; and gee, what’s the good of the rhythm unless it is on something that trips it – that it ruffles? … it’s got to ruffle the meter.337

The rhythm in poetry is not given in notation as in music, but the underlying metrical

scheme is perceived by a reader as a recurring regular pattern against the background of

which emerges the real rhythm with many possibilities of its concrete realisations. The poet,

on the other hand, does not have in mind an abstract scheme, but ‘hears’ already at the

moment of composition some sort of its rhythmical realisation. Brodsky, for instance,

suggests that this main metrical impulse towards composition is a sort of rhythmical hum

which the poet hears while composing a poem. This hum carries away, as it were, all the

aspects of the artistic speech conveying structure and harmony to a formless chaotic material:


The poet might as well hear this rhythmic ‘hum’ from the very first line of the poem or

even prior to its composition; it might take, however, some to time for the reader to begin to

perceive it. This ‘inertia of the rhythm, that general rhythmic impulse, those regularities of

rhythmic movement which we call meter’339 can only be perceived, argues Zhirmunsky, if we

read the entire poem – no line taken in isolation out of the context of the entire poem, can

reveal the metrical pattern.

336 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse, p. 71. 337 Robert Frost. ‘Conversation on the Craft of Poetry’ in Robert Frost. Collected Poems, Prose & Plays (New York: The Library of America) p. 854. 338 Brodsky. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, p.149. 339 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. p. 66.

124

As is shown by Zhirmunsky, the real rhythm of the poem exerts its organizing

influence on the lexical material of the poem as well as an on its content.340 Moreover,

surprisingly enough, the seemingly restrictive dictates of the metrical principles often help the

poet organize his own thoughts and bring the very content about, as suggested by Auden in

his review of poems by Hardy:

Anyone who imitates his style will learn at least one thing, how to make words fit into a complicated structure and also, if he is sensitive to such things, much about the influence of form upon content… Such unusual verse forms help the imitator to find out what he has to say.341

Speaking of the aspect of poetry writing he himself most enjoyed Auden named the

metrical restrictions because they help the poet to say ‘something which you haven’t thought

of saying, and you wouldn’t have thought of if it hadn’t been for these kinds of restrictions.’

342

Thus it becomes evident that for such formal poets of the English language as Hardy,

Frost, Auden and Wilbur etc. the general function of metrical restrictions in their quality of

compositional principles was approximately the same as for their Russian counterparts. It is

precisely in that sense that Brodsky’s assertion that ‘meters are meters no matter the language

in which they are employed. That is what they are meters for’343 – is supposed to be

understood. And yet the existence of these universal principles of metrical composition valid

both for English and Russian does not rule out the existence of the metrical contrasts between

English and Russian, on which Weissbort laid so much emphasis in his argumentation. These

contrast become particularly important when it comes to translation of poetry between these

languages. Let us now see what they are, according to Zhirmunsky.

Metres: Russian-English contrasts

As shown by Zhirmunsky on the example of verse written in the same verse metres in

English and in Russian, although the overriding general principle of distribution of strong and

weak syllables may be the same in both these languages, there are bound to be differences in

340 See also: Victor Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory], p. 438-441. 341 Armin Rathe. Zum Vers-, Strophen- und Gedichtbau im Werk von W.H. Auden (Bamberg: Schmacht, 1969), p. 1. 342 W.H. Auden, An Unpublished Interview (1953) conducted by Walter Kerr published in The Harvard Advocate, W.H. Auden 1907-1973 special issue, 1973, p. 32. 343 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Foreword’ to Alan Myers (ed. & trans.). An Age Ago: A Selection of Nineteenth-Century Russian Poetry. (London: Penguin, 1989) p. xviii.

125

their concrete realizations which will depend directly from the natural phonetic properties of

the respective languages:

Within metrically identical … iambic verse Russian iambs display omissions of metrically stressed accents (a medium of three stresses in an iambic tetrameter) which is due to a greater word length in the Russian language. English iambs on the other hand, because of the respective shortness of the words (predominantly monosyllables), display frequent additional stresses of the metrically weak syllables. 344

RUSSIAN: In Russian poetry in the iamb and trochee, for example, stresses presupposed by the

metrical scheme could often be omitted in actual practice. To illustrate this Zhirmunsky

quoted the famous opening lines of Evgenii Onegin by Pushkin:

Moi diádia sámykh chéstnykh právil, Kogdá ne v shútku zanemóg, On uvazhát’ sebiá zastávil I lúchshe výdumat’ ne móg...345

My uncle has most honest principles: when he was taken gravely ill, he forced one to respect him and nothing better could invent.346

Out of four opening lines it is only the first one that fulfils the requirements of the

metrical scheme of iambic tetrameter, i.e. displays stresses on all four even-numbered

syllables:

In the second line a stress is omitted on the sixth syllable (ZAnemóg); in the third line the required stress is missing on the second syllable (on UVazhát); and in the fourth line it is again the sixth syllable which departs from the metrical pattern (výdumAT’).347

The explanation of this phenomenon lies in the fact that the average length of a

Russian word is slightly less than three syllables (about 2.7 according to the precise

calculations of the theoreticians of verse). A Russian average word is thus easily

accommodated in a ternary metre (dactyl, anapaest, amphibrach); on the other hand, in the

binary metres (iambs and trochees), if the metrically strong syllables were all stressed, longer

344 Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory], p. 237 345 Quoted in Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse, p. 37. 346 Quoted from: Aleksandr Pushkin. Eugene Onegin/ Transl. Vladimir Nabokov (New York: Bollingen Series, 1964) p. 95. 347 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. p.37.

126

words could not be used.348 Thus, the existence of such deviations from the metrical scheme

as omission of stresses, or ‘Pyrrhic feet’, represent an example of the resistance of the Russian

linguistic material to the imposed metrical scheme: ‘In such cases of conflict between the

metrical scheme and the natural phonetic characteristics of the language the actual rhythm

results as a sort of compromise.’349

ENGLISH: The main contrast of the same binary metres in English and Russian is that ‘the

omission of stresses (‘pyrrhics’) is not characteristic of English meters’.350 On the other hand,

the most widespread phenomenon of the English binary metres is the hypermetrical stressing

of syllables in significant monosyllabic words351:

The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea (Gray) A star shot: ‘Lo!’ said Gareth, a foe falls! (Tennyson) Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens and shades of death! (Milton)352

In the last of the examples, a famous line of Milton which is in fact a list of nouns, we

can find three hypermetrical stresses in the first three feet.

Another marked characteristic of English iambs is the extensive use they make of

displacement of stress:

Giving more light, than heat, extinct in both… (Shakespeare) And from the waves sound like delight broke forth (Shelley) Which, tasted, works knowledge of Good and Evil (Milton)353

Despite the fact that Zhirmunsky’s Teoria Stikha was first published as early as in

1925 many of his discoveries continued to be overlooked. Characteristic is the example of

Vladimir Nabokov who specifically dedicated several articles and a book to Anglo-Russian

prosodic contrasts. As late as in 1950s and 1960s Nabokov continued to apply mechanically

the same prosodic principles to iambs in Russian and in English. For instance, in his article

‘Problems of Translation: “Onegin” in English’ (1955) Nabokov, who using his own

terminology spoke of omissions of stress as of ‘modulated line’ or of ‘scuds’354, not only saw

in their use ‘virtue per se’ following the aesthetesizing tendency of Belyi, but also proposed

their use for the translation of Russian verse into English:

348 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. p.60. 349 Idem 350 Ibid., p. 82. 351 Ibid., p. 82. 352 Quoted in Ibid., p. 82. 353 Quoted in Ibid., p. 83. 354 Vladimir Nabokov. Notes on Prosody. (New York: Bollingen Series, 1964) pp. 9-14.

127

There is … one English poet whose modulations, if not as rich in quantity and variety as Pushkin’s, are at least an approach to that richness. I refer to Andrew Marvell. It is instructive to compare Byron’s snip-snap monotonies … with any of the lines addressed by Marvell ‘To His Coy Mistress’. … It is among such melodies that one should seek one’s model when translating Pushkin in verse. 355

Nabokov completely disregards in his suggestion the intrinsic differences in the

rhythmic realisations of iambic metre in English and Russian. Nabokov represents the typical

characteristic of the Russian iambs – the ‘omissions of metrically stressed accents’ as an

aesthetic virtue, as a kind of euphonic richness, which English poets and translators from

Russian should emulate. English verse, which displays few such omissions, as for example,

some of Byron’s verse Nabokov dubs as ‘snip-snap monotonies.’ Nabokov seems to be

perfectly unaware of the fact that such omissions are highly atypical for the English iambs,

which display a completely opposite tendency of additional stresses, as demonstrated by

Zhirmunsky. Oddly enough it was Nabokov who formulated a strategy for Russian-English

translation which Brodsky would later perhaps unwittingly put into practice. Namely, as has

been alluded in the previous chapter, while translating his poems into English, Brodsky was

often trying to convey not their metre as he himself claimed, but their rhythm, which

contained the aforementioned Russian characteristics, i.e. the omission of stresses, or ‘Pyrrhic

feet’. Similarly, as is clear from Brodsky’s readings, he often omits stresses on semantically

charged words while reciting his poetry in English – a practice which stands in sharp contrast

with English prosodic rules. Because of its monosyllabic nature as well as the habit of the

English speech to always stress the semantic words led in English to the practice diametrically

opposite to the Russian omission of metrical stresses – the existence in English of

hypermetrical stresses.

Rhymes: Russian-English similarities: rhyme as compositional principle

Der Reim ist nur der Sprache Gunst, nicht nebenher noch eine Kunst. … Er ist der Ufer, wo sie landen, sind zwei Gedanken einverstanden. … Hier nimmt er teil am ganzen Muß, die Fesseln eines Genius, Gebundnes tiefer noch zu binden. Was sich nicht suchen lässt, nur finden,

355 Vladimir Nabokov. ‘Problems of Translation: Onegin in English,’ Partisan Review XXII (1955), p. 500.

128

was in des Wortglücks Augenblick, nicht aus Geschick, nur durch Geschick da ist was von selbst gelingt, aus Mutterschaft der Sprache springt: das ist der Reim…. (Karl Kraus, ‘Der Reim’356)

Brodsky once referred to himself with pride as a ‘pretty good rhymer.’357 As has been

pointed out by many critics, ‘the rhymes provide one of the structural cornerstones in many of

Brodsky’s poems’.358 In an interview Brodsky himself thus explained the mechanisms of

rhymes as compositional principles:

There are three methods of cognition: analysis, intuition or synthesis, and revelation. Synthesis is a process absorbing analysis and revelation, and in poetry, in the process of composition you employ all three in one way or another. And that’s what is interesting of (Sic.) poetry as a discipline. It is a tremendous mental accelerator. Once you hook up one word, one concept to another, through a rhyme, once you’ve uncovered that these two things are connected, you get addicted to that linkage, to that ability to create that linkage, to not only the facility of the linkage but the certainty of that linkage. That’s what you do on paper; you uncover the dependencies, the relationships which are built into the language. The general manner in which your mind starts to operate is coupling.359

Brodsky’s friend Susan Sontag also confirms this conception of ‘accelerated thinking’

which was embedded for Brodsky in the process of rhyming:

Poetry, he [Brodsky] said, is accelerated thinking. It was his best argument, and he made many, on behalf of the superiority of poetry to prose, for he considered rhyme essential to this process.360

In order to understand better this connection Brodsky made between rhyming and

acceleration of thinking one should bear in mind that one of Brodsky’s crucial conceptions

about poetry was that of a poet being an instrument of language. Language contains in itself

certain dependencies between seemingly unrelated phenomena and the poet’s task is then to

merely unravel them. In the process the poet serves the language as the language serves him –

it enables the poet to travel mentally to such territories and at a speed which would have not

been possible had it not been for this compositional device.

356 Karl Kraus. ‚Der Reim’, in Poesiealbum 78: Karl Kraus (Berlin: Neues Leben Verlag, 1974) pp. 12-14. 357 Brodsky. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, p. 161. 358 Scherr. ‚To Urania’ in Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem, p. 94. 359 Brodsky. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations., p. 184. 360 Sontag. ‚Joseph Brodsky’, in Where the Stress Falls: Essays, p. 332.

129

The same function of rhyme as both a compositional principle as well as a ‘mental

accelerator’ was pointed out by W.H. Auden:

The enormous fun of poetry for me, as compared with prose, is that suddenly you’re faced with a problem of, ‘Now I’ve got to have a word here’, what shall we say, ‘three syllables long, with an accent on the second syllable, rhyming with another word, and meaning dry.’ And all right I have ‘waterless’, and suddenly, you find that you say something which you haven’t thought of saying, and you wouldn’t have thought of if it hadn’t been for these kinds of restrictions. 361

What we might conclude from the quotations above that for both Brodsky as well as

Auden rhyme represented the same kind of a universal organizing device of poetical speech,

regardless of the fact that the former wrote his original verse in Russian and the latter in

English. It would be then logical for a translator translating such a poet to try to find the

analogous dependences between form and meaning in the target language. And yet such a

hypothetical translator would find himself considerably impaired in his undertaking by the

existence of the contrastive tendencies between Russian and English in regard to the use of

poetic rhyme, as I will try to show in the next section.

Rhymes: Russian-English contrasts, feminine rhymes

The Russian language, due to its polysyllabic nature and its freedom of stress, allows

maximum diversity of verse and rhyme forms, says Zhirmunsky.362 In particular, Russian

verse permits the free usage of masculine, feminine, and dactylic rhymes: in classical Russian

poetry regular alternation of feminine and masculine rhyme is considered to be a norm.363 In

English, on the other hand, there is a clear prevalence of continuous masculine rhymes:

Despite the fact that feminine, or even dactylic, rhymes are still possible in English (although they are much less widespread than in Russian), a regular alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes (as in Byron’s poem Fare thee well) is a rare occurrence encountered mostly in translations (e.g. from Russian) which are reproached for appearing ‘monotonous’ to an English ear. (Translation Z.I.)364

Such differences in the rhyme forms constitute one of the greatest problems of the

linguistic theory of translation, says Zhirmunsky. The task of a translator then, he argues, is to

produce a metrically identical or similar (equimetrical) translation, which at the same time

would lie within the limits of the given linguistic possibilities. For example, masculine

361 Auden, ‘An Unpublished Interview’ (1953) by Walter Kerrp. 32. 362 Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory] p. 237. 363 Idem. 364 Ibid., p. 238.

130

rhymes, which are characteristic of English to all genres are traditionally substituted in their

translation into Russian by the alternation of feminine and masculine rhymes more natural for

this language.

Of course, it is possible, maintains Zhirmunsky, to render English continuous

masculine rhymes into Russian without any great difficulties, i.e. to translate them

equimetrically, but such translations despite their apparent precision confer an exotic flare to

the foreign poetical work which were not present in the original and lead to unexpected

distortions of the artistic effect.365 As one example of such involuntary distortions in the

history of English-Russian translation, Zhirmunsky cites a brilliant translation done in 1822

by the great Russian poet Vasilii Zhukovskii of Byron’s The Prisoner of Chillon. At the time

many Russian contemporary critics enthusiastically received this translation (which preserved

the continuous masculine rhyme of the original) as evidence of a special poetic device which

had been adopted by the translator in order to convey a sombre and melancholy mood of the

poem. As a matter of fact, however, Zhirmunsky argues, what Byron had used in the original

was nothing but a neutral and absolutely common form of English rhyming.366 (Professor

Venclova has recently made me aware that Lermontov used this device in his poem “Mtsyri”

precisely with idea of conveying with it a special mood – device, which had been

unconsciously introduced by Zhukovsky).

Conversely, Zhirmunsky speaks of the comic effects which dactylic rhymes, normal

for Russian poetry, produce in English. Here, he says, the ‘metrical clumsiness’ of

hypermetrical three-syllabic endings in English and their lack of an organizing compositional

principle there is supplemented by the fact that as a result of the particular historical

development of English phonetics such endings can only occur in words of foreign – Latin or

French – descent. As an example of such a deliberately used comic effect in English poetry

Zhirmunsky quotes Lord Byron:

Some women use their tongues – she looked a lecture, Each eye a sermon, and her brow a homily, An all-in-all sufficient self director, Like the lamented late Sir Samuel Romilly, The law’s expander, and the States corrector, Whose suicide was almost an anomaly –

365 Ibid., pp. 240-241. 366 Ibid., p. 241.

131

One sad example more, that “All is vanity”. The jury brought their verdict on “Insanity” (Don Juan) 367

This observation is also confirmed by a ‘native’ metrician, Alfred Corn, in his manual

of English prosody, who incidentally also gives an example from Don Juan:

Triple rhyme … has been reserved since the Romantic era almost exlusively for comic effects. This is particularly true with “mosaic” or “wrenched” rhymes, where the extra syllables are provided by more than one word, as in Byron’s notorious couplet from Don Juan:

But, oh! ye lords of ladies intellectual, Inform us truly, - have they not henpeck’d you all?368

In his relatively recent book on Russian prosody, The Development of Russian Verse:

Meter and its Meanings (1988) Michael Wachtel showed that the established associations of a

particular verse form with a particular mood and register are often quite arbitrary. They are

often determined by historical developments in each single literature. Wachtel illustrates his

hypothesis on example of a serious love poem written in verse metre of a limerick:

Whether intended or not, the effect is comic, because a single poem – with rare exceptions – is not sufficiently powerful to offset a century of firm associations. For this reason, we can say that a heartfelt love limerick is doomed to failure. The poet may be sincere, but his form is not. On perhaps subconscious level, the reader’s response to the new poem is largely determined by a set of metrical expectations.

An important question arises from these considerations: are the comic associations inherent in the meter of a limerick, or are they essentially arbitrary, the results of historical coincidence? Numerous poets and philosophers have insisted on the former, yet modern comparative poetics suggests the latter. There is nothing intrinsically comic about amphibrachs, truncated lines, or five-line stanzas. Were our love limerick to be translated into Russian, maintaining the semantics, serious tone, and formal features, most readers would be untroubled by inappropriate associations. In short, metrical associations are not psychological invariants or a part of mankind’s “collective unconscious.” Often, they are specific to a national literature and do not cross geographical boundaries369. (Italics mine, Z.I.)

At the same time Wachtel, of course, admits the existence of the similarities in the

register and associations of the same verse forms in different languages. This, Wachtel argues,

is not a matter of coincidence, but rather a proof of the common genealogy of the respective

poetics:

367 Ibid., p. 302. 368 Alfred Corn. The Poem’s Heartbeat: a manual of prosody. (New York: Story Line Press, 1997) p. 67. 369 Michael Wachtel. “Introduction” to The Development of Russian Verse: Meter and its Meanings. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) p. 2.

132

At times, of course, a poetic form occurs with the same semantic associations in any number of national literatures. This does not mean that these literatures developed the identical form independently. On the contrary, it generally indicates that one has influenced the other or that both originate from a common ancestor. 370

At the same time, Wachtel points out other examples, apart from that of Brodsky, of

poets who tried to single-handedly change the inherent metric associations extant in their

native poetries. In the Russian tradition such a poet was Nekrasov who ‘revised the metrical-

generic system of his predecessors, leading puzzled contemporaries to concluded that he had

made “mistakes”’371. Mikhail Gasparov suggested even an earlier example of metrical

reinterpretation: Latin poet Catullus consciously reinterpreted verse metres, which he had

inherited from the Greeks.372

Some observations on Brodsky’s translating theory in the view of

English-Russian metrical contrasts

Looking at the theoretical pronouncements of Brodsky through the prism of the

Anglo-Russian prosodic contrasts and similarities as identified in theory by Zhirmunsky we

can make following observations:

1) Rhymes and verse metre were for Brodsky just as important as compositional

principles as for his English language counterparts writing formal verse. The existence of a

formal tradition in English, of which he was so well aware, emboldened Brodsky in his search

for metrical equivalents in English of his Russian verse. His believe in the ‘moral’ superiority

of formal verse in comparison with free verse, as well as his conviction that the modern trends

in English poetry have to be resisted confirmed the self-translator Brodsky in his decision to

translate as equimetrically as possible.

2) On the other hand, the implementation of this Brodsky’s decision was at least in

theory hampered by the existence of a number of metrical contrasts between Russian and

English:

370 Wachtel. ‘Introduction,’ to The Development of Russian Verse, p. 2. 371 Wachtel. ‘Notes’, The Development, p. 260. See also Eikhenbaum, O poezii (On poetry), (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1969). 372 Mikhail L. Gasparov. Izbrannye stat’i (Selected essays), (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 1995), p. 382.

133

Firstly, on the level of tradition: formal writing and formal translation no longer

belonged to mainstream practices in English poetry and thus Brodsky’s practices of mimetic

translation could not but clash with the reigning tastes in English-language literature.

Secondly, Brodsky’s adjustment of the poems metre ‘by the ear’ were likely to lead to

the emergence of contrasts with the different rhythmical realisations of the same verse metres

in English: monosyllabic English displays frequent additional stresses where Russian tends to

omit them.

Lastly, Brodsky’s insistence on the retention not only of rhymes, but of rhymes

patterns resulted in his practice of feminine rhyming in English – a type of rhyming not only

much less frequently used in English than in Russian, but which produces quite different

connotations in the verse written in the respective languages. Nabokov describes their

contrastive usage in English and in Russian: ‘Feminine rhymes are [in English] scarce,

insipid, or burlesque.’; ‘Feminine rhymes [in Russian] are as frequent as masculine ones and

add extrametrical music to the verse.’373

Brodsky was repeatedly reminded of the existence of this last Anglo-Russian contrast

not only by his critics, but also by some of his closest friends and allies among native

speakers. One example would be Derek Walcott who suggested in his review of To Urania,

Brodsky’s second collection of translations published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, that no

Anglophone poet would make recourse to the feminine rhymes because of their comic

associations:

The translated Russian risks, in its usually hexametrical rhyming design, a meter which English associates with the comic, the parodic, or the ironic. There is no modern English or American poet who will take such risks – being utterly serious with feminine endings, of attempting to reach the sublime and noble without the pseudo-humility of the dying fall, the retractable conceit.374

Walcott seems, however, to justify above Brodsky’s introduction of feminine rhymes:

their introduction, he seems to suggest, makes the poetic statements less retractable, i.e. more

inevitable.

Another Brodsky associate who commented upon his use of feminine rhymes in

English was Anthony Hecht, famous American poet, friend and translator of Brodsky. In the

‘Introduction’ to the posthumous edition of A Part of Speech Hecht felt it necessary to justify

373 Nabokov. Notes on Prosody. pp. 50-51. 374 Walcott, ‘Magic Industry,’ p. 6.

134

Brodsky’s frequent recourse to the feminine rhymes in front of the English readers by making

them aware of the existence of a different metrical tradition in Russian:

Two-syllable rhymes, favoured in some poems Brodsky composed in English (Persia/inertia, Noah/ spermatozoa) have struck the ears of some English readers as perilously frivolous, though such disyllabic chiming is easily available in the Russian language, and employed by Pushkin and other great poets.375

And yet neither Hecht nor Walcott, despite the attempts they made to justify

Brodsky’s use of feminine rhymes, whether by mentioning some artistic necessity behind

such a use or just writing it off to the existence of a different tradition, questioned for a second

the fact that such a practice would be perceived as unacceptable by the most of English

language readers.

Brodsky, however, chose to disregard their urges. He insisted all through his self-

translating career on the importance of conveying the complexities of the formal structure of

the original. At the time when Brodsky had become the chief translator of his own work Ann

Kjellberg thus described his translation practice:

Usually Joseph gets a fairly literal translation from one of his students and then transmogrifies it himself into some kind of rendering in English of the formal qualities of the Russian original. Form is extremely important to him – part of the legacy of the “Acmeist” school as it came down to him through Akhmatova – though in ways that are apparently uniquely Russian and difficult for me, at least, to hear and understand. … Because it is highly inflected, many words have “feminine” endings (with one of more weakly stressed syllables at the end), so Joseph makes frequent use of feminine rhymes, which are almost unheard of in English. Nuances of stress are carried through the inflected endings of words to an extent that a Russian line is much more flexible than its English equivalent metrically; whereas almost all “serious” English verse is iambic (with the important exceptions of Hardy and Frost, part of the reason why these two have been so important to him) – with other rhythms usually used only to suggest dance-folk idioms – Russian seems to be capable of much more metrical variety…

Also, the Russian lyric tradition is only about a hundred and fifty years old – four or five generations – making formal, rhymed verse in it a much more original and inventive enterprise, unlike English, whose verse forms have passed through so many centuries of use that they cannot be invoked with recalling, each one, an entire tradition. 376

In the above quoted letter Ann Kjellberg tried to prepare the translators who chose to

collaborate with Brodsky at his later self-translating period to what they were ‘up to’. It is

375 Hecht. ‚Introduction’ to Joseph Brodsky. A Part of Speech, p. x. 376 Ann Kjellberg, ‘Letter to translators’, (undated, 1990’s), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 28 Fld 32.

135

interesting that she refers to Brodsky’s recastings with a magical word ‘transmogrify’ and his

ways of adjusting the translations to the requirements of the form as ‘uniquely Russian’.

In the Chapters Seven, Eight and Nine we will examine the concrete translational co-

operation of Brodsky with other translators as well as his translations of his own work. We

will try to examine how exactly Brodsky implemented his translational principles, where he

succeeded and where he was less successful and to conjecture why this happened. We should

also try to see whether and to what extent the ‘theoretical impossibilities’ of a mimetic

translation from Russian into English hampered or were overcome in Brodsky’s recasting of

translations done by others.

The parameters according to which I chose examples were defined by the amount of

material at the disposal: first drafts, letters with comments which provided insights into the

actual process of translation, revisions. Whereas every translation is an interpretation, author’s

commentary represents an even more detailed version of it. For this reason I pay particular

attention to the translation drafts which were accompanied by respective commentaries of the

author, as well as to those which seemed to exemplify Brodsky’s approach in editing

translations by the others as well as well as doing translations himself.

136

Chapter 7: A Second Christmas by the Shore

Introduction: Real poets and mere translators

‘George, no one could have done a better job’, wrote Brodsky to his translator George

L. Kline in April 1973 upon the publication of the Selected Poems.377 Joseph Brodsky:

Selected Poems, was the first collection of Brodsky’s translations in English over which the

author exercised his editorial control; it was also the book with which Brodsky was

introduced into the English speaking world and which represented him in it during the first

years following his expulsion from Russia.

It was an auspicious introduction: Auden wrote the foreword for it (the forward to it or

a forward for it). (George L. Kline, who had got in touch with Auden prior to Brodsky’s

expulsion, persuaded Auden to write it).

On reading these words of praise, one can easily assume that the author would

commission the same person to do most of the translations for the next collection as well.

This, however, proved not to be the case as is evident from the following letter written on 12

April 1976 by Brodsky’s secretary at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, Nancy Meiselas, to Barry

Rubin, a professor of Russian at Queens College and Brodsky’s closest associate in the

preparation of A Part of Speech:

Dear Barry, George [Kline] was in for lunch today, and I have to admit that seeing him was far from a delight. He did bring the re-typed version of the ‘Cape Cod’ poem; a copy is enclosed for you. It’s clear to me that he is perplexed and a little hurt that everyone but George L. Kline has been asked to work on translations. He said he’d already begun on a few of the recent short poems, but he’ll stop until he hears more from us. Apparently, Joseph has told him to go ahead with ‘Mary Stuart’ as well as ‘Cape Cod’, both of which he is trying to peddle. I explained all the details and problems to him, and I think they’ve all registered, but there are bound to be conflicts, as we’ve already imagined. We’ll see. Nancy378

377 Kline., ‘A History of Brodsky’s Ostanovka v pustyne and his Selected Poems,’ p. 19. 378 Nancy Meiselas. ‘Letter to Barry Rubin,’ (12 April 1976), ‘Brodsky General,’ FSG archives, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, Box 41.

137

As follows from the letter above, Kline, to his great disappointment, was

commissioned to do fewer translations for A Part of Speech than he had expected.379 Beside

this, in the tone of Meiselas’ letter – which undoubtedly reflected, in the first place, the altered

attitudes of Brodsky himself – one can detect a certain irreverence towards Kline as translator,

indicating that he had by this time to some degree fallen out of favour with his favourite poet.

This must have hurt the translator, and yet, with the benefit of hindsight, it is hard to reproach

Brodsky, bearing in mind that his was indeed a very difficult predicament: that of having to

choose between artistic and personal considerations.

One of the possible reasons that may account for Brodsky’s new attitude towards

Kline can be traced back to the dramatic change in Brodsky’s own situation. At the time of

the preparation of Selected Poems Brodsky was a beleaguered, persecuted poet whose

manuscripts could not be smuggled out of the country without very high risk to all involved.

So, while it is true that Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems was the first English edition of

Brodsky’s verse over which Brodsky exercised editorial control, , it is also true that while he

remained in the Soviet Union he had very little influence over the choice of his translators. At

that stage of his career, Brodsky was obliged to rely on a few devoted persons such as Kline

and Proffer. Now, thanks to his newly acquired fame and respect in the world of American

letters, in his new ‘reincarnation’ Brodsky could count on participation in the translation of

his verse of such prominent figures of the local Parnassus as Richard Wilbur, Anthony Hecht,

Howard Moss and Derek Walcott – a list of names, as one reviewer observed, which ‘read

like a roll-call of an Academy of English-Speaking poets’380. (Eventually, each of them

translated at least one poem each for A Part of Speech). Understandably, Brodsky was

tempted to give precedence to the translators who were poets themselves, hoping at the time

for a more ‘poetic’ outcome from their translations, as opposed to those done by ‘mere’

translators of poetry such as Kline.

Another reason for Brodsky’s increasingly critical attitude was his own growing

expertise and confidence in English, which exponentially raised his demands on his

translators. This is what Brodsky wrote in 1980 in the author’s note to the original edition of

A Part of Speech:

379 Eventually Kline, who was one of the ten translators working on A Part of Speech, translated eleven out of fifty five poems for the collection. (Z.I.) 380 Peter Porter, ‚Satire with a Heart’, The Observer (14 December 1980) p. 28.

138

I would like to thank each of my translators for his long hours of work in rendering my poems into English. I have taken the liberty of reworking some of the translations to bring them closer to the original, though perhaps at the expense of their smoothness. I am doubly grateful to the translators for their indulgence.381

In fact, not all the translators showed ‘indulgence’ in the force of Brodsky’s

reworking; nor did he rework all translators to the same degree: ‘real’ poets got away with a

lot more than the ‘mortal’ translators.382

And yet, arguably, translations done by the “real” poets – with perhaps one exception

of ‘that miracle of adaptation’383, the translation of “Six Years Later” by Richard Wilbur –

proved to be less fruitful for Brodsky in the long run. As result, A Part of Speech acquired the

traits of what Derek Walcott described as a ‘not necessarily desirable variety of an anthology

of Brodsky seen through the eyes of contemporary American poets’.384 Despite the brilliance

of some of these translations, in them the authentic voice of the poet came across arguably

less than in his own self-translations.

However, it was precisely Brodsky’s practice of reworking the translations of ‘mere’

translators385, i.e. translators, whose versions Brodsky would often treat as rough drafts

(meeting with various degrees of resistance on the part of these translators) that eventually

contributed to the emergence of that extraordinary phenomenon at the centre of my discussion

– Brodsky as a self-translating English-language poet.

In order to approach the core of the present thesis – the detailed study of Brodsky’s

reworkings of the translations of others – I have decided to open with an analysis of the

materials pertaining to the translation of the poem ‘A Second Christmas by the Shore,’ done

by George Kline and subsequently revised by the author. This poem and its translation are

particularly interesting for the following reasons:

1. Perhaps due to the previous record of harmonious collaboration with Kline on Selected

Poems, Brodsky seems to be more outspoken with him in his commentaries about the

tonalities and meanings of single lines of his original poem than with any other

translator. These commentaries shed an exclusive light on some of the aspects of the

381 Quoted in: Brodsky, Collected poems in English, p. 507. 382 See also Correspondence between Anthony Hecht and Nancy Meiselas (1977-1978), ‘Brodsky General,’ FSG archives, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, Box 41. 383 Walcott. ‘Magic Industry,’ p. 12. 384 Idem 385 For example, such translators as Kline, Myers, and, at the later period of To Urania, of Jamey Gambrell, Jane Ann Miller and Peter France. Daniel Weissbort falls into the same category, despite being also a poet.

139

originals; they also reveal why it was absolutely crucial to the author to preserve those

elements in translation. The commentaries will, I hope, make it possible to judge what

was at stake for the author in any given segment of translation in terms of prosody,

tone, metre, content and emotion.

2. Kline was one of the few translators who, according to his own claims, adhered to

Brodsky’s ideas about the necessity of preserving the form in Russian-English poetic

translation. This is what Kline himself wrote to this effect in the two articles dedicated

to his collaboration with Brodsky:

… From the beginning, Brodsky and I have resisted the fashionable trend in translating Russian poetry: the flattening of a highly formal poetry into the informality of free verse. While recognizing that unsuccessful metric and rhymed translations may sound like doggerel, we insist that the opposite extreme – vigorous and ‘uncluttered’ but non-metrical and unrhymed strings of dictionary meanings – is equally disastrous.386 … Brodsky and I are in full agreement on the principle that translations of formal poetry, such as the Russian, must convey as much as possible of its form – its meter, assonance, alliteration etc. – and, where this is possible without recourse to padding or other artificialities, its rhymes and slant-rhymes as well.387

As I shall attempt to demonstrate with reference to concrete examples below,

many of Brodsky’s corrections concern precisely Kline’s rendition of rhymes and

metre, despite the stated theoretical unanimity between the author and the translator on

the rendition of these formal elements in translation.

If borne out this observation will not only show that there was a certain

disparity between

Brodsky’s own theoretical demands of a translation and his concrete practices

in that field; such a discovery will also require some sort of hypothesis as to what

might have prompted this disparity in the first place.

3. Kline was one of the translators who, whether due to personal humility or out of

strong devotion to Brodsky, was prepared to accept a large number of changes to his

translations. Such a high degree of indulgence on the part of Kline gave Brodsky a

greater degree of freedom in bringing those changes about. As the result, some of the

decisions he ventured while redoing Kline’s translations paved the way for what

386 George L. Kline., ‘Working With Brodsky’, The Paintbrush, 4:7/8 (Spring & Autumn 1977), p. 25. 387 George L. Kline., “Revising Brodsky” in Weissbort, Daniel (ed.), Translating Poetry: The Double Labyrinth. [Collection of Essays on Translation]. (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 95.

140

subsequently became Brodsky’s main techniques as a self-translator. For these reasons

the materials below appear to provide a unique opportunity to register first glimpses of

the emergence of the self-translator Brodsky.

In his article ‘Working With Brodsky’ Kline recalled thus his collaboration with

Brodsky on translating ‘A Second Christmas by the Shore’:

The present translation has gone through three distinct versions. In response to the first draft, which I mailed to him in Ann Arbor in May 1976, he [Brodsky] sent me a four-page handwritten letter – uncharacteristically, in English – which began disarmingly: “This is so lovely a poem in English that it’s hard for me to be hard on you. Still…”. There followed a detailed list of objections and suggested improvements. We discussed my revised version for several hours when we were both in New York in June. He had reworked a number of lines and … proposed some new rhymes and slant rhymes….388

From this description one gains a sense of the bare bones of the collaboration. As to

the essence of the Kline-Brodsky symbiosis and of their modus operandi Derek Walcott’s

description from his review of Brodsky’s next collection To Urania is much more revealing.

Walcott comments:

George L. Kline is the co-translator of “Eclogue V: Summer”, but anyone who has worked with Brodsky translating Brodsky knows that what the original goes through is a chaos of transformation. So the labour proceeds in three stages with which the fellow translator must keep pace: the first is the interlinear translation, the second a transformation, and the third, with luck and with Brodsky’s tireless discipline, transfiguration.389

In the following sectors we will take a close look at ‘A Second Christmas by the

Shore’ as it passed through each of these three stages.

“A Second Christmas by the Shore”390

A Second Christmas is a lyrical poem of amorous nostalgia and languor; its tone is

both lyrical and elegiac. It is lyrical in as far as its subject matter is love; it is elegiac because

this love is a matter of the past. This genre of a lyrical love poem being that of ‘a lady with a

very rich and colourful past’ one should among other things attempt to understand where its

originality lies and with whom it might echo.

388 Kline., ‘Working With Brodsky,’ p. 25. 389 Walcott. ‘Magic Industry,’ p. 3. 390 The English version of the poem in its entirety can be found at the end of this chapter.

141

Brodsky often quoted Montale to the effect that ‘poetry is incurably semantic’391 –

form in poetry is indivisible from content, from the sense of the words it employs and the

visual and sensuous images these words are supposed to evoke in the reader. Therein also lies

poetry’s essential difference from music. This view was also confirmed by Auden in an

answer he gave to an interviewer asking him whether poetry contained music, ‘Auden: One

can speak of verbal “music” so long as one remembers that the sound of words is inseparable

from their meaning. The notes in music do not denote anything’. 392 (Italics mine, Z.I.) That is

why, for instance, the ‘musicality’ in verse is not a virtue per se, nor, for that matter, is a

jarring rhythm always a defect in poetry. Only from the interplay of form and content can one

truly say whether or not the form is effective.

In the light of the above quote, an attempt to separate sound from meaning in poetry

seems to be doomed to failure. And yet for illustrative purposes alone, the form and content

will have to be presented here in dissociation from one another. Looking at the interlinear

translation, at the body, or rather, the skeleton of the poem let us now try to place ourselves in

the position of the translator whose task was both to recreate and to animate it. Surely one

should attempt to understand how the poem worked, how it breathed when it was a living

original.

In my analysis of the translational materials I will start from a prosodic analysis of the

poem, proceeding to the interlinear translations of the respective single stanzas and the

discussions of the separate aspects of meaning, interpretation and form. I will try to outline

difficulties and intricacies of certain elements of the poem which seem to me relevant in the

context of their translation. From then I will move to the various translation drafts by Kline

corrected and annotated by Brodsky. I will then proceed to comment on these drafts and

identify new levels of form and meaning on which they shed a new light; at the same time my

commentaries will also refer to the particular translational strategies of Brodsky which can be

inferred from these materials. Next I will examine the third stage in Walcott’s description,

namely transfiguration: Brodsky’s own definitive version with comments regarding both his

decisions in terms of prosody as well as in terms of meaning. Finally I will reach some

conclusions as to the nature and extent of Brodsky’s interventions into the translations done

391 See also: Joseph Brodsky. ‘In the Shadow of Dante’ in Less Than One, p. 110 : ‘… the art of the word, an incurably semantic art…’ 392 Michael Newman. ‘The Art of Poetry Nr.17: Interview with Auden’ (1972), The Paris Review, Issue 57, Spring 1974: URL http://www.theparisreview.com/viewinterview.php/prmMID/3970, accessed on 27 June 08.

142

by Kline. I will also indicate how this translation epitomizes work done by Brodsky with

other translators.

‘A second Christmas’: prosodic scheme

In an interview given in 1991 during his time as Poet Brodsky was asked by Grace

Cavalieri how much English speakers were missing out in his translations. This is what he had

to say:

Brodsky: You can’t say you are missing much. You can’t say you are missing the prosody of another language. You can’t miss the acoustics of another language. That of course you can’t have and you’re not missing it. You can’t miss something that you don’t know.393

Brodsky is making here certainly a very pertinent point, to a degree that it makes one

feel uneasy about endeavouring in, what might seem right from the start, a futile and frivolous

attempt – i.e. trying to describe to English language speakers the prosodic qualities of a

Russian poem. And yet, despite this uneasiness, I can not abstain from undertaking this

attempt. The hypothetical translator of the poem could not have dispensed with a notion of the

poem’s prosodic structure, before approaching a translation. By this token, anyone who would

like to understand what Brodsky was after when he was trying to fashion the English drafts in

the way he felt was closer to the source text, should get at least some basic prosodic

awareness. After all, Brodsky’s own insistence on the necessity of a mimetic translation

makes such an introduction indispensable.

In the next section I will outline the aspects of metre of the poem in question.

Brodsky wrote Vtoroe Rozhdestvo (‘A Second Christmas’) before his emigration at a

time when his predominant metres were still syllabo-tonic, mostly iambics with alternating

masculine and feminine rhymes. It was only later in the beginning of the 1970’s that he

started experimenting with and eventually made the passage towards the accentual verse

known as dolnik. This fact makes the poem Vtoroe Rozhdestvo particularly fitting for our

scrutiny: the fact that iambic pentameter has its direct equivalent in English in combination

with Kline’s whole-hearted adherence to Brodsky’s concept of mimetic translation should not

have resulted in any metrical disparities between the author and his translator. And yet, as we

will see below, many of Brodsky’s corrections are done with regard to precisely rendering

393 Brodsky, Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, p. 143.

143

rhymes and metre. Starting from the concrete examples an attempt will be made to explain

this phenomenon on the basis of Zhirmunsky’s distinction between metre and rhythm and its

repercussions on the concrete phonetic realisations of the poems written in the same verse

metre, but in two different languages.

The second interesting aspect is the rhymes. According to the traditional order of

alternation of feminine and masculine endings in Russian classical verse, the ending in the

first line is supposed to be feminine and that of the second masculine. Brodsky, on the other

hand, often uses the opposite, ‘unorthodox’ order, thus putting masculine ending in the first

line and feminine in the second, as has been also observed by Barry Scherr394 Both Kline and

Brodsky stuck to the original in reproducing this scheme, despite the fact that the use of the

feminine rhymes in English strike ‘the ears of some English readers as perilously frivolous,

though such disyllabic chiming is easily available in the Russian language, and employed by

Pushkin and other great poets.’395

The next aspect of scrutiny is stanzaic design. Another important characteristic of

Brodsky’s poetry which distinguishes it from the nineteenth century Russian poetry tradition

was that, instead of writing in ‘classical’ quatrains, Brodsky tried to invent his own stanzas –

a usage which he allegedly imported from English poetry and particularly from the 16th

century metaphysical poets.396 The poem in question consists of 4 stanzas with 8 lines each;

the first 7 lines of each stanza are written in iambic pentameter, with a final dimeter (two-

foot-iambic) line in each stanza. This type of a stanza with the shortened final line was used

by Brodsky in other poems of that period.397

As will be demonstrated, while Kline tried to stick to the stanzaic design as closely as

possible, Brodsky on the other hand, introduced a lot of changes into the English version.

The rhythmical felicity of Vtoroe Rozhdestvo is achieved through the interplay

between the caesuras on the 2nd and the 3rd foot, omission of stress typical of the Russian

iambics (the famous ‘pyrrhic’ feet), as well as an organized pattern of enjambments (which

394 There are certainly exceptions to this trend. For example, such poems as “Novye stansy k Avguste”, in which we have the reversed order. 395 Anthony Hecht. ‚Introduction’ to Joseph Brodsky. A Part of Speech (London-New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) p. x; See also Chapter Six for a more detailed description of the Russian-English contrasts concerning the use of the feminine rhymes. 396 Cfr. also Barry P. Scherr, ‘Strofika Brodskogo: novyi vzglyad’ [Brodsky’s stanzaic design: new assessment] in Loseff, Lev and Polukhina, Valentina (eds.). Kak rabotayet stikhotvoreniye Brodskogo [How works a poem by Brodsky] (Moskva: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, 2002) pp. 267-299. 397 ‘Rozhdestvenskiy Romans’ (Christmas Song) written in iambic tetrameter, ‘Pis’mo Generalu’ (A letter to a general) and ‘Konets Prekrasnoi Epokhi’ (The End of the Beautiful Era).

144

can be considered on the whole Brodsky’s trademark) and the 2-foot-iambic line with the

regular beat (no omission of stress) at the end of each stanza.

Omission of stress in the Russian pentameter was commented upon as early as in the

18th century by the Russian poets and prosodic theoreticians Trediakovski, Sumarokov and

Lomonosov.398 A medium Russian word is two and a half syllables long whereas each word

in the Russian language has only one stressed syllable. So it would be near impossible to

compose verse in Russian without recurring to the use of omissions of stress or the ‘pyrrhics’.

The function of the ‘pyrrhic foot’ was first theoretically formulated by Andrei Belyi in

the early 20th century using the example of Pushkin’s classical pentameters.399 This important

aspect of Russian prosody, which is not at all self-evident even for the native speakers of

Russian, let alone to native speakers of other languages, seems, however, to be crucial for the

understanding of some of Brodsky’s translational decisions. Because of this property of the

Russian iamb and because of the particular usage of this property that Brodsky makes in the

Vtoroye Rozhdestvo, the poem displays on average 3 stresses per line in the pentametrical

scheme, which, as suggested by its name, would theoretically presuppose the presence of at

least 5 metrical stresses per each line.

Chapter One discussed in some detail Brodsky’s insistence that translators preserve

the metre in translation from Russian into English. However, as it is possible to discover from

the detailed analysis to follow of various translational materials, deviations from the given

prosodic scheme can almost be called the trademark of his self-translations or corrections of

translations by others. In the next section I will propose a possible reason as to why that

happened: rather than trying to find equivalents of the metrical scheme of his originals,

Brodsky seems to be trying to reconstruct in translation nothing less than their ‘living’

rhythm.

Stanza I: interlinear translation

A second Christmas on the shore of the unfreezing Pontus The star of kings [is hanging] over the port’s fence And I can’t say I can’t live without you – because I am living as results from the paper. I exist,

398 See also Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse, p. 35. 399 See also Ibid., pp. 35-43.

145

gulp my beer, soil the leaves, tread on the grass. Vtoroye Rozhdestvo na beregu enj. a (3) 5-foot-iambic nezamerzayushchego Ponta. B (2) 4-foot-iambic Zvezda Tsarey nad izgorod’yu porta. B (4) 5-foot-iambic I ne mogu skazat’,/ chto ne mogu enj. a (3) 5-foot-iambic zhit’ bez tebya/ – poskolku ya zhivu. c (4) 5-foot-iambic Kak vidno iz bumagi./ Sushchestvuyu; D (3) 5-foot-iambic glotayu pivo,/ pachkayu listvu i enj. D (4) 5-foot-iambic topchu travu. c (2) 2-foot-iambic

The addressee of the poem is the speaker’s beloved. The author, or the lyrical ‘I’,

which in Brodsky’s poetry of this kind are practically identical, revisits a Southern province

of the country (or of the empire, as Brodsky would have put it) at Christmas time. Sitting in a

café he recalls the happy days spent with his beloved in the same setting. The opening of the

poem resembles the beginning of a Christmas postcard which tells of the speaker’s

circumstances and his general mood. The very notion of Christmas introduces in the poem a

whole range of associations and mythologies linked to Christianity.

Since the time of Martial, one of the leitmotivs of love poems of separation has been

the lamentations on the part of the lover about the impossibility of carrying on without the

beloved.400 Taking up this motif Brodsky resists what would have been an inevitable slip into

sentimentality. To do that the speaker resorts here to an analytical device: the mere fact that

he is still alive defies the suggestion that he cannot live without his beloved. (Brodsky wrote,

in his essay ‘Footnote to a Poem’ on Tsvetaeva’s elegy to Rilke: ‘The tragedy lies not in that

existence without … is unthinkable but precisely in that such an existence is thinkable.’401)

The author takes up the classical formula ‘I can’t live without you’ and turns it upside down

saying: ‘I can’t say I can’t live without you’. This in Russian original sounds certainly anti-

climatic, almost overly logical. With sardonic and self-deprecating attitude of the next lines (I

exist,/ gulp my beer,/ soil the leaves,/ trample the grass) the poet paradoxically enough

manages to convey the pain of separation with all its immediacy, at the same time avoiding

melodrama.

400 Martial (Marcus Valerius Martialis), Epigramme XII, 46: ‘Nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te.’ (I can neither live with you, nor without you’). URL: http://www.hse.k12.in.us/staff/RBUSH/quotes_by_author.htm, last accessed on 28 Jun. 08. 401 Brodsky. Less Than One, p. 205.

146

Stanza I: Brodsky’s commentaries.

Let us move now to the translation starting with the Brodsky’s letter to Kline:

May 20, 1976 New York

Dear George,

This is so lovely a poem in English that it’s hard for me to be hard on you. Still, there are some things which are sheer misunderstandings; also there are certain substitutions which hamper the meaning. So I’ll try to point out both, but care should be taken, first of all about the latter.

A Second Christmas

A second Christmas spent beside the shore by the shore a of that great Sea which winter does not stiffen. B The Star of Kings above a harbor cliff. And B I cannot claim that I cannot endure a your absence – since, quite clearly, I exist. c This paper is the witness. I am living; D I gulp my beer and soil the bushes, leaving D crushed clumps of grass. xc

I 1st line: ‘spent’ I think, could be omitted. 2nd line: it is ‘Pontus’ (‘Euxinus’); ‘that great Sea’ doesn’t produce necessary implications – slight paganistic touch 3rd line: I understand the rhyme, but the presence of ‘cliff’ carries on the image of ‘crib’, don’t you think? 6th: it’s much more beurocratic (Sic.) I don’t think that ‘exist’ and ‘grass’ are rhymes either. 402

The author’s criticisms, as we can see from the above, are of semantic, prosodic

(rhymes) and stylistic (tonality) nature.

Semantics

Let us first deal with semantics. In the second line Brodsky suggests that ‘that great

Sea’ in Kline’s version does not convey the intended ‘slight paganistic touch’. This should

remind us that Vtoroe Rozhdestvo, as suggested by its title, is a Christmas poem. Christmas

poems occupy a special position in Brodsky’s oeuvre: what is common to all of them is that in

one or another way they all deal with the theme of time. In his book on Venice, Brodsky

402 Joseph Brodsky, ‘Letter to George Kline,’ (May 20, 1976 ), Brodsky Papers, Beinicke Library, Yale University, UNCAT MSS 649, Box 42 Fld 14. The reproduced version contains the annotations made by Brodsky. (Z.I.)

147

writes that for an agnostic403, which he considered himself to be, Christmas and New Year

represented a combined holiday, whose main symbolic significance was that of being a vivid

reminder of the passage of time:

I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is…. I always thought that if the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water, the water was bound to reflect it. Hence my sentiment for water, for its folds, wrinkles, and ripples, and – as I am a Northerner – for its grayness. I simply think that water is the image of time, and every New Year’s Eve, in somewhat pagan fashion, I try to find myself near water, preferably near a sea or an ocean, to watch the emergence of a new helping, a new cupful of time from it. I am not looking for a naked maiden riding on a shell; I am looking for either a cloud or the crest of a wave hitting the shore at midnight. That, to me, is time coming out of water, and I stare at the lace-like pattern it puts on the shore … with tenderness and with gratitude.404

Apparently, according to the author’s intentions, the theme of time was supposed to

flow into the poem through the name of ‘Pontus’, producing classical Latin allusions with

Ovid’s Tristia. 405 Brodsky wanted to get across this allusion, so the word ‘Pontus’ had to be

preserved.

Prosody (Rhymes)

Now to the rhymes: rhymes in poetry are the strongest instruments of both euphonic

and semantic emphasis, but they are also the bane of the translator. The same two words

which rhyme in one language almost never do so in another, hence attempts to find rhymes in

translation inevitably lead to twisting of meaning (not to mention the problem of rendering

feminine rhymes in English) (See also the section “Metres: Russian-English contrasts” in

Chapter Six). Hence the greatest losses in translation are to be expected from the rhymes.

Brodsky, however, insisted, as we know, that translators maintain rhymes. Kline was one of

the translators who attempted to abide by this rule, and yet, apparently some of the rhymes

403 There exists also a tendency to regard Brodsky as a religious poet because of the extensive use by him of Biblical and religious motives, but all the evidence supports that he himself always opposed any concrete religious identification and never embraced any official creed. See also Tomas Venclova. Stat’i o Brodskom [Essays on Brodsky], p. 126. ‘Brodsky, a Jew by his origin, never belonged to any religion of any concrete denomination, although theological motifs occupy an important role in his art. To achieve his personal inner relationship with God was an issue of primary necessity for him.’ (trans. Z.I.) Original quote: «Бродский, еврей по происхождению, формально не принадлежал ни к одной религии и конкретной деноминации, хотя теологические мотивы занимают важное место в его творчестве, и выработка внутреннего отношения к Богу была для него живой потребностью». 404 Joseph Brodsky. Watermark, pp. 42-43. 405 Ovid, Publius Ovidius Naso, (43 BC – AD 18), Roman poet, famous among other for his elegies of nostalgic complaint – Tristia, Epistulae ex Ponto – which he wrote, when Augustus had exiled him in AD 8 to the Black Sea for some mysterious indiscretion. URL: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovid, last accessed on 28 Jun. 08.

148

Kline came up with were still not good enough for Brodsky. Let us have a precise look at

what those rhymes were.

In the 3rd line Kline undertakes a rather acrobatic attempt at producing a feminine

rhyme in English - stiffen/ cliff. And. In doing this the literal meaning of the original had to be

sacrificed (‘The Star of kings [is hanging] over the port’s fence’) and a new image of a ‘cliff’

introduced. Brodsky appreciated the invention of a new English feminine rhyme, but could

not accept the price which had been paid for it. The image of some concrete ‘fence’ the poet

had seen in Yalta was substituted in Kline’s rendition with an abstract one of a ‘cliff.’ For a

poet as committed to realism and topophilia as Brodsky, especially as far as the precision of

visual and geographical images were concerned, the loss of this concrete image was obviously

unacceptable. Moreover, the fence, as we will see, was supposed to re-appear in the poem’s

most crucial scene in the fourth stanza.

Interpretations of meaning: literal vs. metaphorical – I

To read is to translate, for no two persons’ experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally. (W.H. Auden)406

In his essay on Tsvetaeva ‘Footnote to a Poem’ Brodsky wrote the following:

Tsvetaeva was a poet very much of this world, concrete, surpassing the Acmeists in precision of detail ….407 …because of her … proclivity for the concrete, for realism…Tsvetaeva should always be taken first of all not figuratively but literally – just as Acmeists should be... . 408

I would suggest that this realistic property applies with the same degree to Brodsky

himself: the first meaning with Brodsky is always literal. Stanislaw Baranczak, Brodsky’s

translator into Polish has expressed a similar opinion:

The best poems of Brodsky grow out of concrete experience, an experience linked to a certain place and time – and it is only on this basis that metaphysical and historiosophic visions are being created.409 (Transl. and italics mine Z.I.).

406 Auden. ‘Making, Knowing and Judging’, pp. 3-4. 407 Brodsky, ‘Footnote to a Poem’, Less Than One, p. 211. 408 Ibid., pp. 221-224. 409 Stanislaw Baranczak, ‘Perevodia Brodskogo’ [Translating Brodsky] in Lev Loseff (ed.).Poetika Brodskogo: Sbornik statei [The poetics of Brodsky: Collection of essays], (Tenafly N.J.: Hermitage, 1986) p. 244. The

149

It should be added that as to the details of geographical places Brodsky always

described them with particular realistic precision: his poetry can be justly characterized as

‘topophilic’.410

Arguably, in his efforts to remain tactful Brodsky invents, however, a different

justification for his refusal to accept the ‘cliff’, telling his translator that it won’t do here

because of its unnecessary euphonic association with the ‘crib’ which would emerge from the

proximity of the ‘Star of the Kings’ in the same line. But this pretext created greater confusion

– Kline misinterpreted this criticism and in his second take on the translation introduced the

‘crib’, which lies even further away from the literal meaning of the original.

Style (Tonality)

Brodsky’s remark regarding the 6th line in Kline’s rendition is rather characteristic.

Brodsky suggests that Kline’s ‘I exist. /This paper is the witness’ is not ‘bureaucratic’ enough,

in other words, it’s too ‘poetic’. We have already seen that in the first stanza Brodsky’s main

concern was to avoid sentimentality and that his resorting to bureaucratic syntax with

complicated subordinate clauses as well as the roughness of some expressions at the end of

the first stanza served exactly this purpose. (In his essays on Tsvetaeva, Frost and Auden

respectively, Brodsky demonstrates how each of these three poets made an important use of

different registers of speech alternating ‘downward’ and ‘upward’ metaphors (in Frost’s

terminology)411. In order to strike a spiritually or emotionally a very high note without it

sounding too solemn or even pompous poet plays it down by preceding it or by following it

by expressions from lower registers.

This propensity to integrate in the poetic idiom of the highest order expressions of

everyday life, bureaucratese, archaic, slang or downright vulgar expressions is one of the

trade-marks of Brodsky’s own poetry. This property of his verse represents an additional and

quite a significant difficulty for the translation into English.

original quotation: «Лучшие стихи Бродского вырастают из конкретного, привязанного к месту и времени опыта – и только на этой основе выстраивают метафизическое и историософское видение. » 410 For the definition of topophilia see W. H. Auden, ‘Introduction’ to Slick but Not Streamlined, by John Betjeman’, The Complete Works of W.H. Auden:Prose, Vol. II (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002) pp. 302-303. 411 See also Brodsky, Less than one and On grief and reason.

150

Stanza I – Kline’s 1st revision

In response to Brodsky’s criticisms a couple of days later Kline produces a revised

version of the translation. Here is the revised first stanza which incorporates the subsequent

corrections by the author:

A second Christmas by the Euxine’s shore – 5-foot-iamb a a sea whose mirror winter does not harden. 5-foot-iamb B The Star of Kings above the harbor’s crib. And 5-foot-iamb B I cannot claim that I cannot endure 5-foot-iamb a your absence ^ live without you ^ since, quite clearly, I am here. ^,as^ 5-foot-iamb c Indeed this paper proves it. I am living; Î do live^ 5-foot-iamb D I trample grass ^gulp my beerând soil the bushes, heaving ^leaf^ 5-foot-iamb D sown steins of beer. ând trample grass. ^412 2-foot-iamb c

Two of the expressions above crossed out by Brodsky from this second revision

deserve an additional comment: The first one is ‘[a sea] whose mirror winter does not

harden’. On the first glance it seems to be, what one may call a “poetic” rendition of the

original, which goes more or less like ‘unfreezing Pontus’. So why would then Brodsky want

to change it?

Interpretations of meaning: literal vs. metaphorical – II

As mentioned above, time resides, according to Brodsky’s cosmology, in the sea.

What Marvell’s speaker in ‘To His Coy Mistress’ hears ‘at his back’, Brodsky’s lyrical ‘I’

sees in front of him right at the beginning of the poem. 413 Thus the sea that never freezes

stands for time which likewise never stops flowing. With Brodsky, however, as has been

already mentioned, words and figures very often retain their concrete, literal and visual

meanings. The meaning of ‘unfreezing Pontus’ is not only the literal one, that of the Black

Sea in winter, but also a metaphorical one – that of time which never stops flowing, never

freezes.

Kline’s translation, while preserving the literal meaning of the “sea” – ‘[a sea] whose

mirror winter does not harden’ – neglects (because of the word ‘winter’) the metaphorical

component that of time, which is more crucial in the context of the entire poem. As in

412 Brodsky, ‘Letter to George Kline,’ (May 20, 1976 ), Brodsky Papers, Beinicke, Box 42 Fld 14. 413 The Horatian theme of time is famously introduced into Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ in the following lines: ‘But at my back I alwaies hear// Times winged Charriot hurrying near:// And yonder all before us lye// Desarts of vast Eternity’. Quoted in Helen Gardner (Ed.). The Metaphysical Poets (London: Penguin, 1985) p. 251.

151

Collodi’s Pinocchio, where the continuous transformations from the wooden puppet into a

boy take place back and forth throughout the entire body of the novel – both of them are fused

in one person and co-exist contemporaneously – so also in Brodsky’s poetry, the switches

from literal to metaphorical meanings of the same word or figure, co-exist contemporaneously

and take place continuously. This property of any poetry and of Brodsky’s in particular,

inevitably increased the already great challenge in front of his translators.

Double meanings

Another expression crossed out by Brodsky and deserving of commentary is ‘[soil] the

bushes’. ‘[I] soil the leaves’ (‘pachkayu listvu’) has a ‘straight forward’ double meaning in the

original: alongside with the direct meaning of trampling upon the leaves, it also means ‘I am

covering these sheets with ink’ – i.e. ‘I am writing these very lines’ (‘list’ standing in Russian,

as in many languages, for both a leaf and a sheet of paper)414. Needless to say, that ‘soiled

bushes’ in the context of the ‘beer’ being mentioned in the same line was bound to produce in

English associations of quite less sublime a register.

Stanza I – definitive version by Brodsky

Here is the definitive version of this first stanza revised by the author:

A second Christmas by the shore a 4-foot-iamb of Pontus, which remains unfrozen. B 4-foot-iamb The Star of Kings above the sharp horizon B 5-foot-iamb of harbor walls. And I can’t say for sure a 5-foot-iamb that I can’t live without you. As c 4-foot-iamb this paper proves, I do exist: I’m living D 5-foot-iamb enough to gulp my beer, to soil the leaves, and D 5-foot-iamb trample the grass.415 c 2-foot-trochaic

Metre vs. Rhythm

As it is easy to observe, Kline’s version is more consistently faithful to the original: it

has seven pentametric lines followed by an iambic two-liner (dimeter). Brodsky changes the

metrical structure of the stanza, thus challenging his own translational demands as expressed

in ‘Translating Akhmatova’ and ‘Beyond Consolation.’ In three of the first seven lines

Brodsky uses tetrameter instead of pentameter (For the sake of the correctness, it should be

414 The plural forms ‘list’ia’ and ‘listva’ stand for two meanings respectively. 415 Joseph Brodsky. ‘A Second Christmas by the Shore,’ (draft), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 42 Fld 14.

152

mentioned that already in the original Brodsky violated his own metrical scheme by using a

trimeter in the second line of the first stanza). In the last line Brodsky uses a trochaic dimeter

instead of iambic one – a new metrical device, a truncation reinforced truncation of the

expected metrical pattern.

And yet, phonetically speaking, one might argue that Brodsky’s English version

approximates more closely the sound of the Russian original: because of omissions of stress

present in the Russian poem, its rhythm is more rapid and the actual stresses vary from 3 to 4

per line.

It has not yet been noticed by commentators on Brodsky that often when he spoke of

‘metre’ what he actually meant was the ‘rhythm’; in this particular case the rhythm of Russian

pentameters with their characteristic omissions of stress. The rhythm, which Brodsky in fact

attempted to preserve, was an equivalent of the rhythm of his original poems and as such

possessed typical characteristics of the Russian verse: it often contained omissions of stress or

‘Pyrrhic feet’. (The contrasting characteristic of the iambic verse in monosyllabic English is

the presence of additional accents or ‘hypermetrical stress’).416 As a consequence, a conflict

between this rhythm of Brodsky’s self-translations with English rhythmical expectations was

foreseeable.

Rhymes

Almost all of rhymes from Kline’s second revision were subsequently changed by

Brodsky:

1 2 3 4

Kline: shore – endure harden – crib and I am living – heaving Here – beer

Brodsky: shore – sure unfrozen – horizon I’m living – leaves and as – grass

Brodsky’s original

Russian rhymes

beregu-ne mogu

shore – can not

Ponta – porta

of Pontus – port’s

Sushchestvuyu – listvu i

I exist – leaves and

zhivu - travu

I’m living – grass

Looking at the chart above it also becomes evident that, remarkably, Brodsky tries to

rhyme semantically analogous words, if possible, in English, as he had done in Russian. Most

amazingly he often succeeds – half of the rhymes in his last revision of the first stanza are

semantically the same words as in the original poem: ‘leaves and’, ‘grass’, ‘I’m living’ and

‘shore’.

416 Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha, p. 237.

153

Some of the rhymes Brodsky comes up with are authentic trouvailles. For the rhyme

‘unfrozen/horizon’ which in addition to enriching the comparatively scarce stock of English

feminine rhymes also enables him both to preserve the realistic concreteness of the port’s

fence (translated as ‘harbor walls’) as well as to maintain the metaphorical meaning of the

‘Pontus’ of the original, both of which had been lost in Kline’s translation.

Changing slightly the last set of rhymes (from ‘lining-heaving’ to ‘living-leaves and’)

Brodsky gets rid of the grammatical rhymes displaying the same poetic principle applied in

his Russian poems. (As Barry Scherr comments, “Thanks in no small part to the approximate

rhyming, Brodsky generally manages to avoid ‘easy’ grammatical rhymes”).417

It is curious to observe that Efim Etkind discovered the same translating phenomenon

of rhyming semantically identical words also in one of Pushkin’s translations from Parny’s

French into Russian:

Terrible, il frappe, et la tremblante Elveige Tombe à ses pieds comme un flocon de neige Qu’un tourbillon détache du rocher. Он поднял меч... и с трепетом Эвлега Падет как дерн, как клок летучий снега, Метелицей отторженный от скал! (On podnial mech… i s trepetom Evlega Padet kak dern, kak klok letuchii snega, Metelitsei ottorzhennyi ot skal!) In these lines Pushkin gave the first specimen of that brilliant art [of translation], which he will master somewhat later. Without sacrificing the naturalness of expression, he precisely reproduced the syntactical movements of the both phrases and put in the rhyming position the same words as in the original (Elveige-neige-rocher: Evlega-snega-skal [Elveige-snow-rocks])... 418 (Transl. Z.I.)

In the course of the line-by-line analysis of the translating interventions of both Kline

and Brodsky it becomes evident that using the benefit of his authorship Brodsky managed to

render in his recasting several aspects of style, tonality, double as well as literal and

metaphoric meanings of certain lines with greater fidelity to the original than his translator.

417 Scherr. ‚To Urania’ in Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem, p. 95. 418 Etkind Efim G., Russkie poety-perevodchiki ot Trediakovskogo do Pushkina, pp. 204-205 The original quote runs as follows: «В этих трех стихах Пушкин дал первый образец того изумительного искусства, которым овладеет лишь несколько позднее. Не жертвуя естественностью речи, он в точности повторил синтаксическое движение обеих фраз, он поставил на рифму те же слова, что в оригинале (Elveige-neige-rocher: Эвлега-снега-скал)...»

154

On the rhyme front Brodsky’s intervention contributed to the presence of more exact and

sometimes more felicitous rhymes. It has also become possible to identify a tendency in

Brodsky to rhyme, as far as possible, semantically identical words in English, as he had done

in Russian.

At the same time, a second tendency becomes apparent: in his recastings Brodsky

tends to render the Russian rhythm – or, rhythmical realisation of the metrical scheme – as

opposed to the recreation of an equivalent rhythm in English. Brodsky’s intervention would

thus contribute to a considerable foreignisation of the English text; this foreignising effect is

checked by the fact that in his reworkings the poet departed from the already existing drafts

by Kline, who had translated the first stanza in regular English pentameters. Due to this

metrical orthodoxy on the part of Kline the deviations from the standard metrical scheme of a

typical English pentametric line in Brodsky’s version still might re-enter into the category of

variations, which English allows within the prescribed pattern of the pentameter, when it is

handled by each individual artist.

Let’s now move to the second stanza – here is its interlinear translation:

Stanza II

Now [sitting] in the café, from which we, as it should happen to the temporary happy ones, have been thrown out by a soundless explosion into the future, under the assault of winter having fled to the South, I’m with my fingers drawing your face on marble for the poor; In distance nymphs are making leaps, on their hips lifting brocade.

Tepér’ v koféine,/ iz kotóroi mý, e (4) 5-foot-iambic kak i pristálo vrémenno schastlívym, F (3) 5-foot-iambic bezzvúchnym býli výbrosheny vzrývom enj. F (3) 5-foot-iambic v gryadúshchee,/ pod nátiskom zimý enj. e (3) 5-foot-iambic bezháv na Yúg,/ ya páltsami cherchú g (4) 5-foot-iambic tvoió litsó/ na mrámore dlya bédnykh; H (4) 5-foot-iambic poódal nímfy prýgaiut, na bédrakh enj. H (4) 5-foot-iambic zadráv parchú. g (2) 2-foot-iambic

The stanza in Russian is just one single sentence. It is a long construction with several

subordinate clauses. Metrically speaking it displays three enjambments and four caesuras.

155

Brodsky’s poetry is rich in literary echoes, as has been pointed out by several

critics.419 In the stanza in question the metaphysical conceit of time’s soundless explosion has

its repercussions for the rhythmical structure of the verse. As I will attempt to show below, in

Brodsky’s case as well as in Donne’s the peculiarities of the rhythm are intrinsically linked in

each case with the artistic intentions of the respective authors. Donne was often criticized for

rhythmical eccentricity. Brodsky himself often encountered a similar charge with regard to

both his Russian poems and their later English translations.

Literary echoes, metaphysical conceits

Tracing influences in poetry is a risky business. ‘I tend to think as a poet one tries to

write his own poetry’, Stephen Spender once shrewdly retorted to a young man from an

auditorium who had asked him what his ‘influences’ were.420 Brodsky also often repeated that

“as a poet one is influenced by everything one reads.” For this reason T.S. Eliot urged

literature critics to talk of similarities instead of influences.421 And yet the second stanza of

Brodsky’s A Second Christmas cannot help but suggest possible parallels with Donne. The

parallels are to be seen in Brodsky’s employment of complex rhetorical structures which

encompass several lines. This phenomenon has been first identified in Donne by Mario Praz:

… the poetic unit in Donne is not a line, but a stanza and … the rules that reign in it are not those of a song, but those of a discourse. Given the prevalence in this poetry of the intellectual element it was also natural that the resulting music should resemble that of ingeniously woven speech and that of passionate development of thoughts… (Translation Z.I.)422

Like Praz Herbert Grierson noticed in Donne:

He [Donne] is one of the first masters, perhaps the first, of the elaborate stanza or paragraph in which the discords of individual lines or phrases are resolved in complex and rhetorically effective harmony of the whole group of lines.[…] Donne plays with rhythmical effects as with conceits and words and often in much the same way. .[…] [By using several devices,] Donne secures two effects, the troubling of the regular fall of the verse stresses by the intrusion of rhetorical stresses on syllables which the

419 See also Walcott. ‘Magic Industry’ and Lachlan Mackinnon. ‚A break from dullness: The virtues of Brodsky’s English verse’, TLS, June 22, 2001, pp. 9-11. 420 Weissbort, Daniel. From Russian with Love: Joseph Brodsky in English. (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2004) p. 199. 421. See also T.S. Eliot, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry/ Ronald Schuchard (ed.) (London: Faber & Faber, 1993), p. 91. ‘…we must always be on guard to avoid confusing resemblances with influences.’ 422 Mario Praz. John Donne. (Torino: Edizioni S.A.I.E., 1958) p. 268. Original quotation: ‘l’unità nella poesia del Donne non è il verso, ma la strofa e … le leggi che la regolano sono non tanto quelle del canto, quanto quelle dell’eloquenza. Data in questa poesia la prevalenza dell’elemento raziocinativo, era naturale che la musica risultante dovesse assomigliare più a quella di un congegnato e appassionato sviluppo dei pensieri...’.

156

metrical pattern leaves unstressed, and , secondly, an echoing and re-echoing of similar sounds parallel to his fondness for resemblances in thoughts and things apparently the most remote from one another. 423

This property of Donne’s verse in which the individual lines follow all the eccentric

developments of thought and adhere to the rules of a complex rhetorical harmony, rather than

complying with the straightforward principles of euphony, was characteristic of many a

‘metaphysical variety’ of Brodsky’s verse. In Brodsky this effect of ‘troubling of the regular

fall of the verse stresses’, in Grierson’s expression, is often achieved through an extensive use

of enjambments.

Brodsky’s British critics frequently chided him for this overuse of enjambments as

well as for his excessive use of images in his self-translated verse. Their main argument was

that English makes different use of such devices than Russian, which Brodsky as a non-native

speaker failed to fathom. A characteristic example of this sort of criticism came from Donald

Davie in his review of To Urania. Its title ‘The Saturated line’ is quite revealing of Davie’s

main line of critique:

This peculiarity of Brodsky’s verse-English – its heaping of trope on trope, a hyperactivity of metaphors – seems to have come into being not by design, but somewhere in the gulf between Russian and English….the Russian line can master and carry along with itself a clutter of exuberant tropes and ‘physical detail’, under the weight of which the lighter English line stumbles and hesitates and is snarled. 424

According to Davie, Brodsky does not let his English self-translations ‘breath.’ Instead

he overloads them with metaphors and tropes. Such a ‘style’ might be permissible in Russian,

Davie maintains, but does not work in English. The English line ‘stumbles’ under the weight

of such figures. By the same token, Brodsky’s excessive use of enjambment only underlines

the gulf between Russian and English, Davie asserts:

… enjambment ... is a more delicate instrument in English than in Russian precisely because it is potentially more disruptive. If the integrity of the verse-line is less emphatic in English than in Russian, an enjambment sets that integrity at risk in English far more than Brodsky recognizes.425

With the smugness of a native speaker, Davie attributes the presence of such

characteristic peculiarities of some of Brodsky’s verse, such as the piling up of metaphors and

the extensive use of enjambments, to the fact that English was not Brodsky’s mother tongue.

423 Sir Herbert Grierson. ‘Introduction’, Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: The Claredon Press, 1959) p.xxv. 424 Davie. ‘The saturated line,’ p. 14. 425 Idem.

157

Davie assumes that such characteristics are admissible in Russian poetry, but believes that

they make the English line overloaded. Brodsky as a non-native speaker simply failed to

notice.

At the same time, what Davie and many critics before and after him completely forget

is the fact that Brodsky had first smuggled these verse peculiarities into Russian poetry from

nowhere else than from English seventeenth century metaphysical poetry, , which John Donne

pioneered. As was suggested in the Chapter Five, that ‘piece of technique’426 which Brodsky

learnt from Donne, namely thinking in conceits, ‘troubling of the regular fall of the verse

stresses by the intrusion of rhetorical stresses’427 as well as proclivity for finding

‘resemblances in thoughts and things apparently the most remote from one another’428 –

unchained his ‘own Daemon’,429 i.e. helped develop Brodsky’s own deeply-rooted

predisposition for what is sometimes referred to as ‘intellectual verse.’ In Brodsky’s self-

translations these features were restored – as a kind of poetic customs tax – back home into

the domain of English literature. Derek Walcott, who translated several poems by Brodsky

with the help of the interlinear translations and with assistance of the author himself,

acknowledged this too. Although Walcott did not know Russian, his translating experience of

Brodsky made him aware that Brodsky’s verse produces difficulty in translation to the same

degree as it must do in his originals:

This is not “plain American, which dogs and cats can read,” the barbarous, chauvinistic boast of the poet as mass thinker, as monosyllabic despot; but the same critic, in earlier epochs, might have said the same thing about Donne, Milton, Browning, Hopkins. …. There is a sound to Brodsky’s English that is peculiarly his, and this sound is often one of difficulty.430

What Walcott refers to in the quote above as the ‘sound of difficulty’, according to

Mario Praz, can just as well apply to most so-called intellectual poetry:

Donne carefully endeavoured that the sound not only followed the rhetoric of his thoughts, but also highlighted his metaphors and conceits through the interplay of echoes. In one way or another, all the cerebral poets have used – or abused, according to another point of view – verse, twisting it in such a manner as to create uncommon rhythms in order to reflect the uncommonness of their thoughts. Browning and Mallarmé teach us. In these poets there is always an element of irregularity which has to be taken into consideration in order to appreciate their prosody: in Mallarmé there is

426 Quoted in: Carpenter. W. H. Auden: A biography, p. 55. 427 Grierson. ‘Introduction,’ Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century, p.xxv. 428 Ibid, p.xxv. 429 Carpenter. W. H. Auden: A biography, p. 55. 430 Walcott. ‘Magic Industry’, p. 4.

158

the interplay of caesuras, in Donne the eccentricity of accent. 431 (Transl. Z.I.) (Italics mine, Z.I.)

I would suggest that the second stanza of the poem ‘A second Christmas by the shore’

represents precisely such an example of the ‘troubling’ of the rhythm of the poem by special

metrical devices. In this case, the interplay of enjambments and caesuras echoes each twist of

the poet’s reasoning.

To confirm here the appropriateness of the associations with Donne the stanza

incorporates what is known under the name of a ‘metaphysical conceit’. The metaphysical

conceit came notably into fashion in Italy, Spain and England in the 17th century and it

became a common trope of poetry in that epoch. The main characteristic of the metaphysical

poetry according to Eliot is that ‘… it elevates sense for a moment to regions ordinarily

attainable only by abstract thought or on the other hand clothes the abstract, for a moment,

with all the painful delight of flesh….’432 In a different passage Eliot clarifies this poetically

formulated definition of his own in somewhat more prosaic terms. According to Eliot,

metaphysical poetry manages to ‘realize the inapprehensible in visual images’433 and conceit

happens to be its most natural form of expression. Eliot explains further the mechanisms of a

conceit:

A conceit is the extreme limit of the simile and metaphor which is used for its own sake, and not to make clearer an idea or more definite an emotion… The figure does not make intelligible an idea, for there is properly no idea until you have the figure. The figure creates the idea….434

To illustrate this let us turn to the conceit used by Brodsky in the second stanza: the

two lovers being thrown out by the soundless explosion from the past into the future.

It is easy to imagine the visual picture of two people who are suddenly thrown from

one another by a bomb explosion. But to imagine that this is a soundless, invisible and slow

explosion, demands an enhanced effort of imagination on the part of the reader. Therein lies

the intellectual nature of a conceit – in order to grasp it the reader has to stop the natural flow

431 Praz. John Donne, p. 269. Original quote runs as follows: ‘…il Donne si studiava che il suono non solo aderisse alla retorica del suo pensiero, ma anche sottolineasse col gioco degli echi le analogie e i concetti. Tutti i poeti cerebrali hanno del resto trattato – o maltrattato, secondo l’altro punto di vista – il verso, distorcendolo a modellarsi su ritmi non familiari, per rispecchiare la non familiarità dei pensieri. ... Browning e Mallarmé insegnino. In codesti poeti v’è sempre un elemento imponderabile di cui va tenuto conto per apprezzarne la metrica: in Mallarmé è il gioco delle cesure, in Donne l’eccentricità dell’accento’. 432 Eliot, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, p. 55. 433 Ibid., Note on p. 57 434 Ibid., p. 138.

159

of reading and dedicate it a special attention. (For this reason Eliot said that when you read

Donne ‘your mind is continuously exercised.’435 The benefit of the conceit is its capacity to

tell us a number of things in a brief expression. For instance from the ‘time-bomb’ conceit one

learns about the main qualities of time, its invisible (or soundless) passage, its destructive

character and the precipitous nature of its passage, quite contrary to the general perception of

its gradualness. As a ‘mental accelerator’ the conceit is particularly effective; the similarity

between such apparently disparate phenomena as an explosion and the effects of the passage

of time is grasped instantly as the ‘odour of a rose.’436

In his Nobel lecture Brodsky named poetry’s propensity to accelerate mental processes

as one of the main reasons behind poetry writing: ‘The one who writes a poem writes it above

all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of consciousness, of thinking, of

comprehending the universe.’ 437 In fact as maintained by Derek Walcott, one of the greatest

achievements of Brodsky was restoring intellectual ambition in English verse:

Joseph’s poetry has enriched English twentieth-century poetry because most poets in the twentieth century that I can think of don’t see intelligence as being a quality of poetry. I think one of the things I learned from Joseph is that thinking was part of poetry.438

That is why it is not surprising that Brodsky did not so easily agree with the critique of

some of his British critics who blamed him for overloading his verse in English with thought

(!). In the unpublished draft of a response to Davie’s article Brodsky shrewdly and wittily

retorted:

I genuinely regret Mr Davie’s finding my poems „oversaturated“. Next time around I’ll try to water them down to his liking – to the consistency of tea, I suppose. … It is beyond my ken to counter his potent fantasies about my literary goals and affinities so well matched by the patent nonsense about properties of Russian meters.439

As we have seen on the examples of Davie in the present chapter as well as on the

example of Denise Levertov’s article cited in the Chapter Five, Brodsky’s English language

critics often made recourse to the easiest form of attacks, criticising Brodsky’s English self-

translations for their ‘Russianness’ where in fact they were dealing with universal features of

his poetics.

435 Eliot, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, p. 175. 436 Ibid., p. 51. 437 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Uncommon Visage’ (Nobel lecture), On Grief and Reason, p. 58. 438 Valentina Polukhina. Quoted in Iosif Brodksii glazami sovremennikov [Brodsky through the eyes of his contemporaries] (St. Petersburg: Zhurnal ‘Zvezda’, 1997) p. 45. 439 Joseph Brodsky, ‘Draft of a response to Davie’s article,’ Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19, Folder 17.

160

Stanza II: Kline’s first draft

Here again is Kline’s first draft of the translation of the second stanza with comments

and annotations by Brodsky:

II

Having fled south punched ^forced^ down by winter’s fist, I’m in that coffee-house ^café^ from which we two were exploded soundlessly into the future, our temporary happiness now past; my fingers trace, in ôn^ poor-man’s marble, lines that form your face. Nymphs leap by the far roadstead; in a distance their stiff brocaded skirts are hoisted up to their thighs. II 4th: I’d do something like: ‘according to the happiness of past’ or ‘according to

the temporary law of happiness’: THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. 5th: «Ундины» [‘undines’] in this case sound and imply something much more pejorative – a bit nastier than ‘nymphs’.440 What’s more, there is NO “roadstead”: the whole scene takes place inside the coffee-house: those nymphs leap in the bowels of this room, on stage, in semi-dark room. 441

The difference between ‘our temporary happiness now past’ in Kline’s rendition and

what Brodsky expected this line to convey is clear: what happened to the lovers in the poem is

not just their single case, but exemplifies a general phenomenon, or a law: happiness is always

temporary when it is seen against the background of time. A similar idea is reflected in the

title of the famous poem by Robert Frost so much admired by Brodsky: “The Happiness

Makes Up in Strength For What It Lacks in Length”.

Interpretations of meaning: literal vs. metaphorical – III

The comment on the 5th line is on the other hand interesting as a testimony of a special

brand of typically Brodskian realism. He often incorporates in his verse certain realistic

details, which sometimes have strictly personal, significance or are shared by few persons

beyond the author himself. For instance, in the poem in question it is not at all evident to a

Russian reader reading the original poem what kind of nymphs Brodsky is here referring to.

Instead of imagining a rather squalid dancing show in the bowels of a semi-dark provincial

coffee-house (which it apparently was, after all) a Russian reader might start interpreting the

440 This reference to ‘undines’ is an apparent mistake of Brodsky, for they occur neither in the original, nor in Kline’s translation drafts. 441 Quoted from Brodsky, ‘Letter to George Kline,’ (May 20, 1976 ), Brodsky Papers, Beinicke, Box 42 Fld 14.

161

line metaphorically. The metaphorical meaning is also there – otherwise Brodsky wouldn’t

have called those female dancers ‘nymphs’; but it is there as a part of a description of a

concrete visual scene and the epithet ‘nymphs’, apart from restoring in retrospect those

dancers some of their dignity, is also in line with the elegiac register of the poem. Here we

have an additional proof of our hypothesis expressed earlier that the first meaning with

Brodsky is always literal.

Using the examples we came up with in the course of the detailed scrutiny of the first

two stanzas of the poem ‘A second Christmas’, we have encountered several cases of Brodsky

correcting his translator who had mistaken the literal meaning of that or other line for a

metaphorical one. Often, as in the example just quoted above, it would not have been possible

even in the original to tell one meaning from the other without the author’s commentary.

Similarly Brodsky’s interventions restored the balance between the meanings of single

passages – a balance essential for the sake of the basic intelligibility of the translations.

Stanza II – Kline’s first revision

Once more first the revision of the second stanza done by Kline:

Having fled south, pressed here by winter’s fist, a 5-foot-iamb I’m in that coffee-house from which we two were B 5-foot-iamb exploded, soundlessly, into the future, xB 5-foot-iamb by the impermanence of happiness; xa 5-foot-iamb my fingers trace, on poor-man’s marble, lines c 5-foot-iamb that form your face. Plump nymphs cavort in clusters D 5-foot-iamb far off; their stiff brocaded skirts are hoisted x 5-foot-iamb up to their thighs. c 2-foot-iamb

Stanza II: Brodsky

And here for comparison is the definite version of the second stanza revised by the

author:

Retreating south before winter’s assault, a 5-foot-iamb I sit in that café from which we two were B 5-foot-iamb exploded soundlessly into the future xB 5-foot-iamb according to the unrelenting law xa 5-foot-iamb that happiness can’t last. My finger tries c 5-foot-iamb your face on poor man’s marble. In the distance, D 5-foot-iamb brocaded nymphs leap through their jerky dances, D 5-foot-iamb flaunting their thighs. c 2-foot-iamb

162

Metrically speaking the changes Brodsky made here to Kline’s translations are not

substantial – his intervention was limited to ‘tightening up’ the rhymes (‘tries/thighs’); the

slant rhyme ‘distance/dances’ is an original solution for a feminine rhyme.

On the other hand the ‘assault/law’ Brodsky comes up with is a less precise slant

rhyme. As is evident from his own comment above, what mattered for him with regard to this

line was to make the idea of the ‘law’ come across in the first place.

Here are the changes to the Kline’s rhymes in the second stanza made by Brodsky:

1 2 3 4

Kline winter's fist-happiness two were-future clustered-hoisted lines-thighs

Brodsky assault-law two were-future dances-distance tries-thighs


Russian rhymes

Kotoroy my – zimy

from which we – winter’s

schastlivym-vzryvom

happy-explosion

bednykh-bedrakh

poor-thighs

cherchu-parchu

I’m drawing- brocade

In the translation of this stanza the author manages to preserve only one word in a

rhyming position in correspondence with the original poem, namely ‘thighs’.

Stanza III

Here is the interlinear translation of the third stanza:

What, gods! If the brownish spot in the window is to symbolize you, gods, were you trying to convey us after all? The future has arrived and it is bearable; an object falls down, the violinist leaves, the music has stopped and the sea and the faces get more and more creased, but there is no wind. Chto, bogi,/ - yesli buroye pyatno enj. i (3) 5-foot-iambic v okne simvoliziruyet vas, bogi – J (3) 5-foot-iambic stremilis vy nam vyskazat v itoge? J (3) 5-foot-iambic Gryadushchee nastalo,/ i ono enj. i (3) 5-foot-iambic perenosimo;/ padayet predmet, k (3) 5-foot-iambic skripach vykhodit,/ muzyka ne dlitsia, L (4) 5-foot-iambic i more vsio morshchinestey, i litsa. L (3) 5-foot-iambic A vetra net. k (2) 2-foot-iambic

163

The third stanza opens with a rhetorical question addressed to the gods which might

just be a veiled nod to Horace. 442 The author takes a stoical stance in the face of what

apparently is a vision of eternity, i.e. a place where no wind blows.

Once again Brodsky resorts to a conceit to convey his vision. The sea needs the help

of the wind to become creased, but with the sea of time it is a different story. It does not even

need the wind’s help to produce creases either on human faces or on its own fabric, for its

flow is perfectly effortless.

Stanza III – Kline’s 1st draft:

Let us now take a look again at Brodsky’s corrections and comments on Kline’s

translation of the third stanza:

III What is it, gods – if this small grey-brown spot, a 5-foot-iamb glimpsed through a window, symbolizes B 4-foot-iamb yourselves – that you would have us realize? Is B 5-foot-iamb it, gods, that future days are here, and not a 5-foot-iamb unbearable? Things fall apart, the fid- c 5-foot-iamb dler leaves, the music dies, and deepening creases D 5-foot-iamb spread over the sea’s surface, and our faces. D 5-foot-iamb But there’s no wind. c 2-foot-iamb III 1st: the ‘spot’ is not ‘small’ – it is essential (Sic.) sun through dirtied,

dimmed window. 3rd: ‘that you would have us realise’ afterall. (Sic.)

442 The motif of futility of trying to maintain good fortune in the future through augury is a recurrent theme with Horace. See for example ‘Ode to Leuconoë’ in English translation by David Ferry:

Don’t be too eager to ask What the gods have in mind for us, What will become of me, What you can read in the cards, Or spell out on the Ouija board. It’s better not to know.

Quid sit futurum cras fuge quaerere, et quem fors dierum cumque dabit lucro adpone, nec dulcis amores sperne puer neque tu choreas,

Quoted from: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), The Odes Of Horace: Trans. David Ferry (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997), p.33.

164

4th: there is no questioning any longer. “It (the future) arrived, and it is bearable. It’s much more abrupt, George, and sort of firm – THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT.

5th: not that important but: a thing falls down (on the floor) and not “things fall apart” – it’s too much [of] a judgement.

6-7th: I am not that sure about ‘deepening creases’ – although it’s quite beautiful; there are mere wrinkles – and not ‘our’ faces but ‘faces/the faces’.

In the comment to the first line of the stanza Brodsky provides an explanation which

was bound to remain ‘obscure’ in the original: i.e. that of the sun described as a ‘brownish

spot’.

From the comment to the fourth line it becomes clear that the author wanted to strike

here a stoical note in a Horatian manner.443

In the comment to the fifth line, Brodsky explains that Kline’s ‘poetic’ rendition

‘things fall apart’ does not suit the requirements of the source text. ‘Things fall apart’

proposed by Kline, which contains a clear reference to Yeats in English, 444 is certainly much

more dramatic than the ‘falling object’ of Brodsky’s original poem.

Stanza III: Brodsky

Here is the definitive version of the 3rd stanza, as revised by Brodsky. It is both

metrically faithful to the original and incorporates the author’s own comments as far as the

meaning of the stanza was concerned:

III Just what, you gods – if this dilating blot, a 5-foot-iamb glimpsed through a murky window, symbolizes b 5-foot-iamb your selves now – were you trying to advise us? B 5-foot-iamb The future has arrived and it is not a 5-foot-iamb unbearable. Things fall, the fiddler goes, c 5-foot-iamb the music ebbs, and deepening creases D 4-foot-iamb spread over the sea’s surface and men’s faces. D 5-foot-iamb But no wind blows. c 2-foot-iamb

443 ‘In Horace’s view of things the unexpected is expected too, and the dire, and his stoical acceptance that this is so gives strength to a style which is unshakable in its clarity and force…’ Quoted from Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), ‘Introduction’ by David Ferry, The Odes Of, A Translation by David Ferry, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997, p. xiii. 444 W.B. Yeats. ‘The Second Coming’: ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.’ Quoted from W.B. Yeats. The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats/ ed. Peter Allt. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957) p. 402.

165

The changes to Kline’s version here are minor: the only one big substitution which

attempts to restore the meaning, i.e. to render with greater clarity the lyrical heroe’s stoic

resolve to endure his dire state, is undertaken in the fourth line. For the rest it looks as though

Brodsky’s main preoccupations here were those of achieving greater euphony in the English

translation of this stanza. Obviously enough, being the author and in charge of the translation

he could afford more independence from his own Russian text than a translator.

Here are some rhyme substitutions by Brodsky:

1 2 3 4

Kline: spot – not symbolizes – realise? is creases – faces fid – wind

Brodsky: blot – not symbolize – advise us creases – faces goes – blows


Russian rhymes

piatno – i ono

blot – and it

bogi – v itoge

Gods – after all

ne dlitsia – i litsa

has stopped – and faces

predmet – a vetra net

object – but no wind

Assonances, alliterations: richness of sound

We see that here Brodsky appreciated quite few of the rhymes found by his translator,

especially the feminine ones, but he got rid of unnecessary cacophonic truncated-rhyme ‘fid-

/wind’ in the fifth line and rendered the sixth line with one syllable less than the metrical

scheme would demand. As a result the sound that was beginning to emerge in the English

version done by his translator received more resonance; the lines which described music

started sounding like the subject of their description. (‘…Things fall, the fiddler goes,/ the

music ebbs, and deepening creases/ spread over the sea’s surface and men’s faces./ But no

wind blows.’). This music had its continuation and led to startling consequences in the next

stanza, which we will see in due course.

Stanza IV

The next stanza is by far the most essential of the poem, as it contains both images of

utmost beauty and terror. It is no coincidence therefore, that Brodsky’s contribution to its

translation is greater, as we will see, than to any other part of the poem.

Here again first my interlinear translation of the fourth stanza:

One day it [sea], but not, alas, we will flow over the seashore’s fence and will advance under the exclamations ‘[Please], don’t’, raising its crests over one’s head, towards the place where you sipped your wine, slept in the garden, dried your blouse, -

166

and crashing tables will prepare for the future mollusc the bottom. Kogda-nibud’ ono,/ a ne – uvy – enj. m (3) 5-foot-iambic my, zakhlestnyot reshyotku promenada N (3) 5-foot-iambic i dvinetsia pod vozglasy “ne nado”, N (3) 5-foot-iambic vzdymaya grebni vyshe golovy, enj. m (4) 5-foot-iambic tuda, gde ty pila svoyo vino, o (4) 5-foot-iambic spala v sadu,/ prosushivala bluzku, P (4) 5-foot-iambic - krusha stoly,/ gryadushchemu mollusku enj. P (4) 5-foot-iambic gotovya dno.445 o (2) 2-foot-iambic

Brodsky mentioned on several occasions how important nouns are in poetry. In one of

his assignments to his students at Mount Holyoke with the topic ‘Choice of inanimate object’

Brodsky wrote: „Go heavy on nouns and easy on adjectives (the general rule in poetry any

way).”446 Pronouns are arguably just as important in this, one of the most condensed and

economic of arts. If we give them a closer look some of the developments and shifts in the

subject matter of the poem become clearer:

I stanza: Pontus (sea/time) vs. I & you II stanza: future (present) vs. we & I III stanza: future (present) vs. we & I IV stanza: sea (future-time) vs. you

‘Onò’ (it) can refer to three things in the Russian version of the poem since it is the

neuter pronoun: the future (‘gryadùshchee’), the sea (‘mòre’) and time (‘vrèmia’). The

importance of the pronoun ‘onò’ is strengthened, because it echoes the rhyme ‘vinò’ (wine)

and ‘dnò’ (bottom) the last and an important rhyme in the poem.

The metaphor in which time was compressed to an explosion in the first stanza is

repeated in the forth one with the difference that this time around the compression – of

centuries ahead – produces not an explosion, but an eschatological flood. Its effects are even

more destructive and the devastation it causes is all the more global. It has been noticed by

Lev Loseff that there exists a similarity between the way the metaphors become the objects of

new metaphors with Brodsky and the way they did with metaphysical poets, as was pointed

out by Barry Scherr:

445 Capital letters stand for a feminine ending and the small letters for the masculine (e.g. aBaB). The ictuses in each line are written in bold letters and their number per line is given in brackets. 446 Joseph Brodsky, ‘Write a poem about inanimate object’ (Student Assignment), Brodsky Papers, Beinicke Library, Yale University, UNCAT MSS 649, Box 48, Fld 10.

167

Lev Loseff caught this feature of Brodsky’s poetry precisely when he compared him to the English metaphysical poets, noting that “the metaphysician seeks only the initial metaphor, expands it and then the metaphor leads him to results which in all probability stun the poet himself.’447

According to T.S. Eliot, however, of all the so called ‘metaphysical poets’, this quality

of playing constantly with his own metaphors was most vividly peculiar only to Donne.448

Eliot speaks of the way Donne’s thoughts become the objects of his own observation: ‘It is in

the direction of his attention and interest, the direction in which Donne made his real

observations, that I seek for his mind; in the examination of his own sensations and ideas and

emotions.’449 For this reason Eliot calls Donne a ‘voluptuary of thought.’450

Be that as it may, one piece of evidence that has emerged in the course of our present

discussion of the poem ‘A second Christmas by the shore’ is that Brodsky uses his own

metaphors as points of departure for other new metaphors.

‘Enchaféd flood’

For a Russian reader the ‘time-flood’ from the last stanza bears a clear allusion to the

famous opening of the ode which the Russian 18th century poet Gavriil Romanovich

Derzhavin wrote on his death bed:

The river of times in its stream carries away all the human deeds And drowns in the precipice of oblivion Peoples, kingdoms, and kings. And if something remains [preserved] Through the sounds of lyre and trumpet This too will be devoured by eternity’s maw And won’t escape the common fate. (Interlinear translation, Z.I.) 451

447 Quoted in Scherr. ‚To Urania’ in Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem, p. 100. 448 See also Eliot, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, pp. 84-87. 449 Ibid., p. 84. 450 Ibid., p. 168. ‘Donne might be called a voluptuary of thought…’ 451 The original text runs as follows:

Reka vremion v svoiom stremlenyi Река времен в своем стремленьи Unosit vse dela lyudei Уносит все дела людей I topit v propasti zabvenya И топит в пропасти забвенья Narody, tsarstva i tsarei. Народы, царства и царей. A yesli chto i ostayotsia А если что и остается Chrez zvuki liry i truby, Чрез звуки лиры и трубы, To vechnosti zherlom pozhriotsia То вечности жерлом пожрется I obschei ne minet sud’by. И общей не минет судьбы.

168

Derzhavin’s ‘river of times’ is, of course the Lethe, the infernal river of forgetting.

However, in contrast to Derzhavin’s apocalyptic flood, whose victims bore more public

features (kingdoms and kings among others), the sea in the Brodsky’s poem takes its toll on

his beloved. One might even think of the entire scene in terms of time’s revenge on the

beloved in the manner reminiscent of some carpe diem poems. Let us compare for example

Horace:

You’re going to have your turn out there alone, … Out there in the night you’ll moan that all the young men Prefer the lustrous ivy and lustrous myrtle To the withered leaves that winter’s companion the cold Wind causes to scatter and scrape along the alley.452

Or alternatively, Marvell, displaying the slightly more morbid tastes of the 17th

century:

Thy Beauty shall no more be found; Nor, in thy marble Vault, shall sound My ecchoing Song; then Worms shall try That long preserv’d Virginity… 453

It seems to me, however, that the main sentiment in Brodsky’s poem is not that of

revenge. The image of the beloved is metonymically portrayed through its relation to the

places which her mere presence had rendered into sacred objects. The fact that these sacred

objects are depicted at the moment right before they fall into ultimate oblivion, strikes here a

particularly shrill note. It seems as if the despair which the author has so far held at bay –

hiding it at the beginning behind the mask of cynicism or later resolving to endure it stoically

in the face of time – eventually found a violent outlet in this last scene.

Here is the first draft of Kline’s translation with Brodsky’s markings and subsequent

comment:

IV Someday the sea, and not – alas – ourselves,

Quoted from: Gavriil R. Derzhavin, Stikhotvoreniya (Poems). (Moskva, Leningrad: Sovetskiy Pistatel, 1963) p. 374. 452 English translation quoted from: Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), The Odes Of Horace, p. 67. 453 Quoted from: Gardner. The Metaphysical Poets, p. 251.

169

will sweep across the railings of the boardwalk, advancing to sharp screams of “Don’t!” and “Stop it!” to tower its breakers high above men’s heads and flood the place where you once sipped your pale champagne, cat-napped, or dried a flimsy cotton white blouse – and crush the chairs to silt a new sea-bottom for future snails. Yalta 1971 (translated by George L. Kline) IV 3rd: advancing ‘under accompaniment of exclamation(s) ‘don’t’.

Either ‘don’t’ or ‘Stop it’ BUT NOT BOTH. «Не надо» sounds quite absurd, helpless, idiotic – that's the point.

5th: no ‘pale champagne’ (although cherish your memory of Crimean champagne, please)

The ending is lovely but – wrong. What makes the impact is the word ‘bottom’ in the

very end. The whole business of ‘evolution’ is stressed – and more (I think) than ‘evolution’

alone. ‘Snails’ are just charming – or just unpleasant. «Моллюск» is terrifying, and the whole

notion of 'future' – changes. “For future-days mollusc (or whatever) fixing the/a bed”.454

Vision of future

In order to understand correctly the paragraph above of Brodsky’s commentary to

Kline’s translation of the first draft we will have to look at Brodsky’s highly idiosyncratic

version of the future – a theme which remained of interest for him till very late in his career.

This importance of the future was also evident from the following assignment he gave his

students at Mount Holyoke University many years after the composition of the poem in

question:

Whatever treatment of this theme you may choose, try to stay cool: try to keep enthusiasm out of it. Remember that you are writing about an aspect of time, and that you know nothing about it save that it will surely come. In other words, terror is more in place here than enthusiasm, yet this terror, too, must be controlled…. You have to sound dry, resolute, clear-eyed: you have to give your reader an impression that you know what you are talking about…. Imagine too that your parents and in general the people who seem to you being older than yourselves will not, most likely, be around. Figure out now how you will feel about it.

Avoid sounding either apocalyptic or sardonic; try to come off sober or even severe.455

454 Brodsky, ‘Letter to George Kline,’ (May 20, 1976 ), Brodsky Papers, Beinicke, Box 42 Fld 14. 455 Joseph Brodsky, ‘Write a poem about the future’ (Student Assignment), Brodsky Papers, Beinicke, Box 48, Fld 15.

170

As is evident from the above, Brodsky associated the future with the prospect of non-

being. The theme of non-being in general and of his own non-being in particular, i.e. of

contemplating life after death, started to interest Brodsky very early in his career.456 One

characteristic example of this interest is a paraphrase Brodsky used of the famous sentence by

Marx, whom Brodsky particularly despised: ‘Many things determine consciousness besides

being (the prospect of nonbeing, in particular).’ 457

One can only conjecture where exactly Brodsky’s interest in non-being came from.

Brodsky himself, however, seemed to consider this notion of a terrifying future to be a

peculiarly American idea, specifically manifested in the poetry of Robert Frost. Brodsky

explained this idea in a conversation with his friend Czesław Miłosz while discussing the

differences between American and European poetries:

The reason I like Frost so much … is [because of] … his distinctly own, distinctly American notion of terror. He is indeed a terrifying poet. … European poetry is – if one can make such sweeping statements – and I guess I can, being a defrocked European – is a tragic poetry. Whereas Frost is not tragic, if only because tragedy is always fait accompli, something that has already happened, right? Tragedy, in a sense, is basically a retrospective genre. And Frost is its opposite; he deals in terror, in negative projections, for terror is always an anticipation, a projection of your own negative potential. In that respect, in that future-oriented sense, he is indeed very American, as well as every bit a catastrophist… It is for this reason that I am so keen on him – because, after all, he tells me, a European, or, well, Eurasian – something qualitatively new about the species or at least something the literature of the continent failed to reveal …458

In fact, if we turn to some of the Frost’s poems, we might discover that the ‘terrifying’

and slightly Darwinian ‘molluscs’ from Brodsky’s ‘A Second Christmas’ are close relatives

of the not less terrifying and Darwinian ‘jellyfish’ we find in Frost:

Sarcastic science, she would like to know In her complacent ministry of fear How we’re proposed to get away from here When she’s made so we have to go Or be wiped out… …. The way to go away should be the same As fifty million years ago we came If anyone remembers how it was…459

456 See also Brodsky’s early poems such as for instance Nature Mort and 1972. 457 Joseph Brodsky, ‘A Poet and Prose’, Less Than One, p. 189. 458 Milosz. Conversations, pp. 116-117. 459 Robert Frost, ‘Why wait for science’. Quoted in Robert Frost, Collected Poems, Prose, and Plays, (New York: The Library of America, 1995), p. 358.

171

and There once we lay as blobs of jellyfish At evolutions opposite extreme Now as the blobs of brain we lie and dream With only one vestigial creature wish…460 (from ‘Why Wait For Science’ and ‘Etherealizing’ by Robert Frost).

Stanza IV: Kline’s 2nd draft

Having considered Brodsky’s comments Mr. Kline made some minor amendments

and produced this second version of the fourth stanza:

Some day the sea, and not, alas, ourselves, will sweep across the railings of the boardwalk, advancing to thin screams of “Stop it!” – to tower its breakers high above men’s heads and flood the park where you drank wine, ate bread, took cat naps, and dried out your cotton white blouse – to crush tables and ^to^ lay a new sea-bottom for mollusc beds.

As we can see, Brodsky suggested some minor changes that the patient translator tried

once again to incorporate in the next revision. Instead something else happened: Brodsky

rewrote the whole stanza altogether. Let us now contemplate the end result:

Someday the slowly rising breakers but, a 5-foot-iamb alas, not we, will sweep across this railing, B 5-foot-iamb crest overhead, crush helpless screams, and roll in B 5-foot-iamb to find the spot where you drank wine, took cat- a 5-foot-iamb naps, spreading to the sun your wet c 4-foot-iamb thin blouse – to batter benches, splinter boardwalks, D 5-foot-iamb and build for future molluscs D 3-foot-iamb a silted bed. c 2-foot-iamb

Brodsky’s rewritten version almost succeeds in matching the Russian original in

richness of music, or speaking technically, of assonances, consonances and alliterations.

While the assonances in English build themselves around different vowels than in Russian (in

Russian they were built around four vowels: «а», «о», «ы», «у» ['a', 'o', 'y', 'u']); among

alliterations and internal consonants there happen to be surprisingly enough some

overlappings. In Russian they were: ‘v’, ‘vzd’, ‘vzgl’, ‘gl’; ‘gr’, ‘kr’; ‘gd’, ‘gt’, ‘nd’, ‘dn’;

460 Frost, ‘Etherealizing’, Ibid., p. 359.

172

‘stl’, ‘spl’, ‘pl’. In English we have a lot of liquid (r, w, and l) and plosive sounds (b, p, t and

d), their combinations with each other and a sibilant:

1) “r’s” in combination with plosive sounds “b”, “br” ( ‘rising’, ‘breakers’, ‘but’,

‘railing’);

2) “cr’s” (‘across’, ‘crest’, ‘crush’, ‘screams’);

3) “w’s” (‘we’, ‘will’, ‘sweep’, ‘where’, ‘wine’, ‘wet’);

4) “b’s” (‘blouse’, ‘batter’, ‘benches’, ‘boardwalks’, ‘build’, ‘bed’);

5) “s’s” alone and in combination with other consonants (‘slowly’, ‘sweep’, ‘screams’,

‘spot’, ‘-naps’, ‘spreading’, ‘splinter’, ‘sun’, ‘silted’);

6) “l’s” alone and in combinations (‘slowly’, ‘alas’, ‘will’, ‘railing’, ‘helpless’,

‘blouse’, ‘splinter’, ‘build’, ‘molluscs’, ‘silted’);

7) “f’s” (‘for’, ‘future’).

The combination of these elements produces in English an effect of music. Some of

these words, as one might observe, had already appeared in the Kline’s version, but they had

not constituted so consistent a pattern.

To achieve such a euphonically felicitous results Brodsky had to make changes only

an author had the authority to make. For instance, no one but him could decide that in the

main metaphysical conceit of the stanza, a century-long-destruction by time compressed to an

instantaneous flood, the waves should be advancing slowly (‘the slowly rising breakers’). In

the original no such information is given.

Just another example is the treatment of a rare semantically-euphonic parallelism

between a Russian word and its English translation – the expression ‘krusha stoly’ meaning

‘crashing tables’. Kline had rendered it as ‘to crush tables’. Brodsky being led more by his ear

than by anything else, although preserving the actual word ‘crush’, moved it to the third line:

‘across this railing,/ crest overhead, crush helpless screams, and roll’. (In the meantime,

having spotted another parallel between the sound and meaning of the same word in Russian

and English, Brodsky successfully introduced it here: ‘grebni’ – ‘crest’). The result was the

emergence in both cases of a new image: the sea became more active, almost eerie. On the

other hand the screams, which in the original had been articulated with words (‘[Please],

don’t!’) were here simply paraphrased; at the same time yet another new image that of the

‘crushed screams’ emerged.

173

The ‘tables’ were easily sacrificed and turned into ‘benches’ for the sake of the

alliteration, making the total of six ‘b’s’ in the last three lines. The drying of the blouse was

turned into: ‘spreading to the sun your wet/thin blouse’. In addition Brodsky added a new

element of devastation not present in the original: ‘splinter boardwalks’.

Let us now look at last at what happened here in terms of the rhyme :

1 2 3 4

Kline ourselves – heads stop it – boardwalk cotton – bottom bread – beds

Brodsky but – cat- railing – roll in boardwalks – molluscs wet – bed


Russian rhymes

uvy – golovy

alas – head

promenada – ne nado

boardwalk – don’t

bluzku – mollusku

bluse – mollusc

vino – dno

wine - bottom

On the rhyme front we see the same tendencies in Brodsky which have been already

observed earlier: he tries to get rid of what for him must have sounded like banal rhymes

(such as ‘cotton-bottom’ here) and attempts to have certain words which rhyme in the

original, in the rhyming position in English as well.

∗ ∗ ∗

Let us now contemplate the end result, the definite version by Brodsky and try to see it

in the light of the preceding commentary:

A second Christmas by the shore of Pontus, which remains unfrozen. The Star of Kings above the sharp horizon of harbor walls. And I can’t say for sure that I can’t live without you. As this paper proves, I do exist: I’m living enough to gulp my beer, to soil the leaves, and trample the grass. Retreating south before winter’s assault, I sit in that café from which we two were exploded soundlessly into the future according to the unrelenting law that happiness can’t last. My finger tries your face on poor man’s marble. In the distance, brocaded nymphs leap through their jerky dances, flaunting their thighs. Just what, you gods – if this dilating blot, glimpsed through a murky window, symbolizes your selves now – were you trying to advise us? The future has arrived and it is not unbearable. Things fall, the fiddler goes,

174

the music ebbs, and deepening creases spread over the sea’s surface and men’s faces. But no wind blows. Someday the slowly rising breakers but, alas, not we, will sweep across this railing, crest overhead, crush helpless screams, and roll in to find the spot where you drank wine, took cat- naps, spreading to the sun your wet thin blouse – to batter benches, splinter boardwalks, and build for future molluscs a silted bed. 1971 Yalta

Conclusions

The present chapter undertook the analysis of the various translation drafts of the

poem ‘A second Christmas by the shore’, Brodsky’s corrections and commentaries on the

corrections, as well as the subsequent reworkings by the author. Considering this translation

to be representative in many respects, one can come to the following conclusions as to the

nature and extent of Brodsky’s so called ‘interventions’ into the translations done by other

translators.

1. Translator’s freedom: content, semantics, tonality

The first and most evident conclusion which can be made with regard to the rendition

of the content of the original is the following: one of the undeniable consequences of

Brodsky’s reworking was that the translation of his poem became to a considerable degree

more faithful to the original as far as its content was concerned. Under content we understand

here a complex interplay of various metaphorical and literal meanings, tonalities and

emotions, special shades of meanings and different registers of speech of the original. A

faithful rendition of many of these elements, was evident from the analysis above, only

became possible through the immediate and active involvement of the living author in the

process of translation.

Brodsky’s liberty in making changes to his original poems in translation turned out to

be particularly beneficial, as we could see with regard to the translation of the forth stanza of

the poem in question. As shown by Efim Etkind in his famous book Poezia i Perevod [Poetry

and Translation] – a classic on theory of poetical translation – constraints on a translator of

175

poetry, ‘his incapacity to travel beyond the main structure set by the author – beyond the

metaphors and similes, puns and images’ proves to be even more disastrous than ‘the

straightforward mistakes’ as it often ‘leads to the appearance of many still-born translations.’

(transl. Z.I.) 461 For one thing Brodsky’s self-translations avoid this vice of ‘literalness’

referred to above by Etkind. Brodsky’s liberty in introducing new elements and changing

those of the originals seems ultimately to have been one of the principal factors to promote

these self-translations into the realm of independent texts in English. In these respects

Brodsky’s strategies seem to be those of a mimetic translator, an heir of Pushkinian

translating school.

2. Rhymes

The second important conclusion concerns the rendition of rhymes by Brodsky. As

opposed to the Modernists’ conception of rhyme as a decorative device462, in Brodsky’s

poetical composition rhymes constituted a central mechanism. According to Brodsky, rhyme

is not merely coincidental connections between seemingly unrelated objects or phenomena

created by rhyme (See Brodsky’s own definition of the mechanism of rhyme in Chapter

Four).

Quite to the contrary rhymes unravel secret connections already present in the

language. Rhymes in Brodsky are always designed to connect meanings. Thus it becomes

important that in the translation not only certain sounds are rhymed (e.g. masculine or

feminine rhymes found), but also that certain meanings rhyme as well. This position explains

also an interesting tendency which has become evident only in the course of our analysis: a

tendency on the part of Brodsky to try to rhyme semantically identical words in English

translation to those which had rhymed in the original. (Similar translating tendency had been

before identified by Etkind with regard to Pushkin’s translations from French).

The search for rhymes was for Brodsky indeed a very serious matter. It was with pride

that he described himself in an interview as a ‘pretty good rhymer’ in Russian463. His friend

461 Efim Etkind, Poezia i Perevod [Poetry and Translation] (Leningrad: Sovetskiy Pisatel, 1963), p. 87. Original quotation runs as follows: «...когда нет явных ошибок, есть иное, не менее гибельное – есть скованность переводчика, его неспособность выйти за пределы того, что задано автором, - за пределы авторских метафор и метонимий, каламбуров и образов. Так возникают бесчисленные мёртворождённые переводы.» 462 See also H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), ‘Introductory Note’, Hayyim Nahman Bialik. Knight of Onions and Knight of Garlic, trans. Herbert Danby. (New York: Jordan Publishing Company, 1939) p. 5. 463 Brodsky. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations, p. 161.

176

and fellow Nobel winner Czesław Miłosz even attributed Brodsky’s rhyming skills in Russian

to some supernatural power:

I envy the inventiveness of Brodsky in this aspect of poetry. Nobody used before him such rhymes in Russian as he did. That’s why I say that he was a shaman, because he was under an influence of poetic inspiration. Those things were not contrived, not done in accord with reflection. I’m sure it’s received as a gift of a daemon.464

The same could also be said about his ability to find rhymes in English. Our scrutiny

of rhymes Brodsky came up with in his definite translation version revealed his uncanny

dexterity in finding authentic rhyming trouvailles in English. Often Brodsky’s rhymes are

arguably more interesting than those proposed by his translators; he avoids banal grammatical

rhymes: Brodsky rarely rhymes two words of the same part of speech, e.g. ‘shore - sure’,

‘unfrozen - horizon’, ‘I’m living - leaves and’, ‘as - grass’, ‘tries - thighs’, ‘blot - not’, ‘railing

- roll in’, ‘wet - bed’.

3. Verse metre

In his reviews Brodsky insisted absolutely upon retaining verse metre in translation

from Russian to English. (Note: Chapter Five). And yet the verse metre seems to be the most

problematic and controversial aspect of Brodsky’s own revampings of the work of his

translators.

In our example reading of ‘A second Christmas by the shore’ it became clear that

Brodsky tends to render the ‘rhythm’ of the Russian original in his translations into English,

instead of finding an English equivalent of its ‘metre’ as he suggested to other translators

reviewing translations of Akhmatova and Mandelstam. (See Chapter Five).

To shed some light on this seeming inconsistency between Brodsky’s demands upon

others and his own translational practices here is an interview he gave to Grace Cavalieri at

the Library of Congress in Washington DC on the occasion of his Poet Laureateship. In it

Brodsky thus described the process of his own poetry composition:


464 Milosz. Conversations, p. 198. 465 Brodsky. Conversations, p.149.

177

The ‘hum’ possessing ‘psychological denominations’ which Brodsky mentions in the

interview above, is supplying the rhythm, which usually corresponds to a certain metrical

scheme iambic, trochaic, dactylic etc. Yet, as shown by Zhirmunsky, even if in the literary

traditions of two different languages there existed identical metrical schemes – as there exist,

for instance, iambic pentameters in both Russian and English – their national rhythmical

realisations of these schemes differ, because of the inherent natural differences between the.

So, for instance, a pentametric line in Russian will normally contain omissions of stress or

‘pyrrhics’; an average English pentametric line, on the contrary, will display additional,

hypermetrical stresses – a natural result of the monosyllabic nature of English.466 (See also

Chapter Six).

In his remakes of the translations Brodsky tried to adjust the metre to that ‘hum’ that

he heard in the original. This becomes increasingly evident in the detailed prosodic analysis of

his corrections. It is also evident in his own very idiosyncratic manner of reciting his self-

translations. It is even clearer from the evidence given by his collaborative translators. Most

of them remembered that Brodsky talked them out of syllable counting. For example, Alan

Myers remembered that Brodsky ‘would also snigger derisively if he caught me counting

syllables’.467

This phenomenon of Brodsky adjusting the verse metre of the translation by the

Russian ear became especially evident on the example of the poem ‘A Second Christmas by

the shore’. The poem belongs to an earlier period, when Brodsky still used predominantly

regular syllabo-tonic metres – an iambic pentameter in this particular case. Kline, faithful to

Brodsky’s own theoretical demands from a Russian-English translation, had rendered all the

stanzas of the poem into regular English iambic pentameters. Brodsky, on the other hand,

introduces into his version tetra-metric and even trimetric lines, trying, in my view, to

reproduce the omissions of stress characteristic of the original iambs. In this respect Brodsky

as a self-translator seems to come closer, albeit, unwittingly to Benjamin’s ideal of a

foreignising translator.

In the chapters to come I will try to further expatiate on how Russian-English metrical

contrasts are reflected in Brodsky’s translations.

466 See also Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse, p. 80. 467 Valentina Polukhina, unpublished interview with Alan Myers September 2003 – November 2004.

178

4. Stanzaic design

As to the stanzaic design of the original – Brodsky tried to preserve it as much as

possible. This led to the problematic introduction of many feminine rhymes into the English

version of the poem, which in English have quite different connotations than in Russian (See

also Chapter Six):

There is no modern English or American poet who will take such risks – being utterly serious with feminine endings, of attempting to reach the sublime and noble without the pseudo-humility of the dying fall, the retractable conceit.468

I shall further trace this tendency in Brodsky’s translation on the examples to follow to

make an accurate and unbiased assessment of his recastings.

5. ‘Simultaneity of assonances’

The revisions of the first drafts, which reflected the suggestions and corrections by the

author, alongside with the adjustments to the rhymes introduced by him, would alone have

resulted in what one might call a more faithful translation. But for Brodsky as a living author

this was obviously not enough. He must have felt that such a translation would not give the

full idea of the sound of the original. There must have been a grain of irresponsibility about

his attempt to rewrite entirely the whole of the stanza himself – Brodsky was after all aware

that English after all was not his native language; but this irresponsibility was also a blessing,

as he proved to be able to produce assonances in English – assonances which make the

Anglophone reader ‘wonder whether Russian was as rich in consonance and alliteration as the

translation’ (Derek Walcott).469

This demonstrable ability of Brodsky to achieve a ‘simultaneity of assonances’470

suffices to refute those of his critics who claimed that he had ‘a wooden ear’ in English.

Brodsky would be the first to admit that a translation is always a sacrifice and a

compromise. It would have been impossible to try to achieve the musical richness of

assonance, consonance and alliterations throughout the entirety of a poem, without entering in

468 Walcott, ‘Magic Industry,’ p. 6. 469 Ibid, p. 2. 470 Idem.

179

conflict with its other elements. Thus, similarly to Tsvetaeva in her translations 471, Brodsky

tried to concentrate on those parts of the poem which he as the author knew to be the most

crucial ones, in order to re-invent in the translation English equivalents of their original

euphony. Being both the author and the translator in one person gave Brodsky an enormous

advantage over other co-translators by referring directly to the intentio, in Benjamin’s

definition, of the original work that he, as the original author, knew better than anyone. The

degree of freedom Brodsky enjoyed in rewriting certain parts of the translated poem was

incomparably higher than that of his translators.

6. Literary allusions

One further perception that we have gained in the course of the present analysis is that

Brodsky’s originals are littered with references and allusions to poetry by his predecessors –in

Russian, English and Latin (Derzhavin, Donne, Horace etc.). This observation is also

supported by the authoritative opinion of Derek Walcott: ‘The intellectual vigor of Brodsky’s

poetry is too alarming even for his poet-readers, because it contains the history of the craft,

because it openly reveres its inheritance…’472

Brodsky, however, does not attempt to suggest or to push any of these allusions in his

commentaries neither to his translator, nor to his English readers. Hence the question of

whether they can be detected in his English translations is bound to remain open.

In the following chapters I will endeavour to track further the already identified

tendencies of Brodsky’s rewritings of the translations done by his co-translators.

Appendix

Original poem in Russian:

E.R.

Второе Рождество на берегу незамерзающего Понта. Звезда Царей над изгородью порта.

471 See also Vyacheslav Ivanov, “O yazykovykh prichinakh trudnostey perevoda khudozhestvennogo teksta” (On the linguistic reasons causing difficulties for the translation of poetic texts), Poetika Perevoda: sbornik statei (Poetics of Translation: Collection of Essays). (Moskva: Raduga, 1988) p.79. 472 Idem, ibid., p. 6.

180

И не могу сказать, что не могу жить без тебя – поскольку я живу. Как видно из бумаги. Существую; глотаю пиво, пачкаю листву и топчу траву. Теперь в кофейне, из которой мы, Как и пристало временно счастливым, беззвучным были выброшены взрывом в грядущее, под натиском зимы бежав на Юг, я пальцами черчу твое лицо на мраморе для бедных; поодаль нимфы прыгают, на бедрах задрав парчу. Что, боги, - если бурое пятно в окне символизирует вас, боги, – стремились вы нам высказать в итоге? Грядущее настало, и оно переносимо; падает предмет, скрипач выходит, музыка не длится, и море все морщинистей, и лица. А ветра нет. Когда-нибудь оно, а не – увы – мы, захлестнет решетку променада и двинется под возгласы «не надо», вздымая гребни выше головы, туда, где ты – пила свое вино, спала в саду, просушивала блузку, – круша столы, грядущему моллюску готовя дно. январь 1971. Ялта 473

473 Iosif Brodskii. Stikhotvorenia. Poemy. [Short Poems. Long Poems.] (Moskva: Slovo, 2001), pp. 333-334.

181

Chapter 8: ‘From nowhere with love’

‘A Part of Speech’: prosodic experiments

Although Brodsky tried to avoid interpreting his exile from the USSR as the radical

hiatus (with this purpose he included into the collection, Konets prekrasnoi epokhi, which was

published after his exile, poems he had written while still living at home) – in terms of formal

innovations the cycle ‘Chast’ Rechi’ (‘A Part of Speech’), written in the USA in 1975-1976,

represents a point of departure.

One of the peculiarities of A Part of Speech lies in the fact that the cycle consists of 20

very short poems: nineteen 12-line-long ones and one 16-line-long – a phenomenon rather

unusual for Brodsky who is known for writing poems of longer length. Longer forms, as it has

been pointed out, give the author the opportunity to warm up to his theme, chance to consider

the various ramifications of his thought, and time to express these thoughts in a fuller way;

shorter forms, on the other hand, allow greater focus on the material at hand, and

consequently the attention paid to the formal elements is more extensive. Here is how

Brodsky illustrates this point with the help of a metaphor:

… because a poem sits in the very middle of a page surrounded by the enormity of white margins, each word of it, each comma carries an enormous – i.e., proportionate to the abundance of unused space – burden of allusions and significances. Its words are simply overloaded, especially those at the beginning and at the end of the line. It ain’t prose. It’s like a plane in the white sky, and each bolt and rivet matter greatly.474

Paying greater attention to the form of the poems from ‘A Part of Speech,’ one might

say that the focus of the cycle is on the verse metre in which it is written. With the exception

of only one poem, written in iambic pentameter, all the poems in ‘A Part of Speech’ are

written in loose dolnik (or accentual verse). This makes the cycle stand apart from Brodsky’s

other poems of that period.

Not that the poet had not written poems in accentual verse before – his first collection

Ostanovka v pustyne (1970) contained already five poems written in dolnik; such long poems

as ‘Lagoon’ and ‘Thames in Chelsea’ and others had been written in the similar metre as early

as in 1973-1974; but in the cycle ‘A Part of Speech’ we are dealing with a much more

consistent experiment with and development of it: dolnik is represented here by a wider range

474 Brodsky, Less than one, p. 316.

182

of its ‘looser’ or ‘tighter’ varieties, i.e. varieties whose rhythmical structure deviates to a

greater or lesser degree from the classical syllabo-tonic meters. Accordingly it would be quite

tempting for us to try to trace some sort of artistic justification behind such an experiment.

Such an attempt will be undertaken in the course of the analysis of the poem ‘Niotkuda s

liubov’iu’ translated by Weissbort and subsequently revised by Brodsky.

The translation of the poem ‘Niotkuda s liubov’iu’ seemed to me particularly fitting

for analysis within the context of our present inquiry based on the following reasons:

1. As I have tried to show in the Chapter Six, the main disagreement between Brodsky

and Weissbort over translation concerned the retention of metre and rhymes on which

Brodsky so much insisted in translation. According to Brodsky, Weissbort, his

translator, did not succeed in preserving these elements of Brodsky’s verse; however,

according to Weissbort, he did preserve the metre and used the solutions for rhyming

based on sound and vowel equivalence more appropriate for a translation in English.

In my analysis of the poem, ‘Niotkuda s liubov’iu’ (‘From nowhere with love’) –

representative of the new verse by Brodsky, which subsequently became his dominant

verse form – I will show that the poems written in this metre set new difficulties for

the translator. Basing my analysis on Zhirmunsky’s verse theory, I will endeavour to

demonstrate that with regard to the dolnik, rhyme plays a particularly important role as

a structural device: with the disappearance of rhyme the poems written in dolnik lose

the last support of their rhythmical structure and start to resemble plain prose. This

should explain to us in part the logic of Brodsky for whom the disappearance of strong

rhymes in Weissbort’s rendition was automatically linked with the disappearance of

the poem’s metre, i.e. the disappearance of its rhythmical structure.

2. ‘From nowhere with love’ is one of the first among the many love lyrics of separation

and amorous nostalgia written by Brodsky in exile. Thematically it is related to the

poem ‘A second Christmas by the shore’ discussed earlier, but since the treatment of

the same theme and form of the poems is quite different from the poem, ‘From

nowhere with love’, it seemed to me particularly tempting to draw some comparisons

between these two poems and to single out their differences.

183

‘From nowhere with love’: interlinear translation

From nowhere with love, nteenth Marchember, dear respected darling, but it doesn’t matter who, for, speaking frankly, it’s hard to recall the facial features, nor yours, but neither anyone else’s sincere friend is greeting you from one of the five continents supported by cowboys; I have loved you more than the angels and Him Himself and that is why I am now more remote from you than from both475 of them; late at night, in the valley which has fallen asleep, on its very bottom, in the little township covered with snow to the doorknob, wriggling on my bed sheet at night – as it isn’t at least mentioned below, fluffing up my pillow with the moaning‘you’ beyond the seas for which there is no limit, in the darkness I am repeating your features with all my body like a berserked looking-glass. (Transl. Z.I.)476

Here is the Russian version:

Niotkùda s lyubòv’iu,/ nàdtsatogo martobrià,// (4) a dorogòi uvazhàyemyi mìlaya,/ no ne vàzhno enj. (4) B dazhe ktò,/ ibo chèrt litsà,/ govorià enj. (4) a otkrovènno,/ ne vspòmnit’ uzhè,/ ne vàsh,/ nò enj. (5) B i nichèi vèrnyi drùg vas privètstvuyet s odnogò enj. (5) c is piatì kontinèntov,/ derzhàshchegosia na kovbòyakh;// (4) D ya liubìl tebia bòlshe,/ chem àngelov i samogò,// (4) c i poètomu dàl’she teper ot tebià,/ chem ot nìkh obòikh;// (6) D pòzdno nòchyu, v usnùvshei dolìne, na sàmom dnè,// (6) e v gorodkè,/ zanesiònnom snègom po rùchku dvèri,// (5) F izvivàias’ nòchyiu na prostynè –// (3) e kak ne skàzano nìzhe po kràinei mère –// (4) F ya vsbivàiu podùshku mychàshchim „tý” enj. (4) g za moriàmi, kotòrym kontsà i kràia,// (4) H v temnotè vsem tèlom tvoì chertý,// (4) g kak bezùmnoe zèrkalo povtoriàya.// (3) H

Content

Let us first discuss briefly the content of the poem in question. As we have said before

in the Chapter Seven, resembling a Christmas postcard, ‘A second Christmas’ opens with the

475 Professor Venclova suggests that in the original version of the poem we have to make do with a rare mistake on Brodsky’s part, namely the anacoluthon. Here the pronoun ‘both’ refers to a multitude plus a single entity: ‘both’ = ‘the angels’ + ‘[the Lord] Himself’ instead of two single entities. Yet in the original this mistake does not seem to be so apparent. 476 Underlined are the words which rhyme in the original.

184

lyrical hero informing his addressee of his whereabouts, his general mood, etc. In the poem,

‘From nowhere with love,’ this is no longer a matter of resemblances: the poem overtly

begins like a letter complete with a sequence of words and constructions that are typically

used in written communication: ‘From nowhere with love, nteenth Marchember477, dear

respected darling.’ Aside from the fact that we are made to understand that in the new

circumstances of the lyrical hero these attributes of epistolary correspondence have become

utterly meaningless: they no longer fulfil their primary function, that is, they do not

communicate anything. These bulky expressions placed at the beginning encumber the poem

making the detection of its rhythm particularly difficult for the reader. The lyrical hero makes

a mockery of them, or perhaps himself and the futility of his own enterprise as he endeavours

to write ‘with love’ from ‘nowhere.’478

The word ‘niotkuda’ (nowhere) is the first in the poem and bears the strongest

emphasis, thus producing also the strongest impact. Let us dwell on it for a while. In English

‘nowhere’ among other connotations also has colloquial one being a part of the widely used

idiomatic expression ‘in the middle of nowhere’. The word ‘nowhere’ in English describes the

geographical position of the author, seen from the perspective of his beloved, at the moment

of the poem’s composition. For the addressee of the poem, who was expected to contemplate

the setting of the lyrical ‘I’ from the other side of the iron curtain, his location – a university

campus hidden in the depth of ‘one of the continents’ – must have appeared as one abstract

and huge ‘nowhere.’ This English expression has, however, no literal equivalent in Russian,

but there is a strong suspicion that Brodsky might have it in mind when he used the word to

open the Russian poem. This is an instance of a bilingual play on words which abounds in

Brodsky’s verse and which are rather characteristic of some exiled writers. 479

More importantly, both the Russian ‘niotkuda’ and the English ‘nowhere’ reveal a new

perspective of the author’s current residence when it is seen in relation to his former home

(the latter is also the actual whereabouts of his addressee). In this case, ‘nowhere’ has yet

another meaning – it stands for a place of non-being, a zone of Brodsky’s constant

metaphysical explorations. In the following unpublished letter to his friend Carl Proffer,

written shortly after his emigration from the USSR, Brodsky recognizes that this concept of

477 In Russian the neologism ‘martobria’ is a straightforward reference to Gogol’s short story, ‘The notes of a madman.’ 478 The opening phrase ‘From nowhere with love’ produces also an ironic allusion with the famous American novel by Ian Flemming From Russia with Love. 479 One example of such a writer that comes to mind is, of course, Nabokov.

185

‘non-being’ is particularly crucial for his work. In this letter Brodsky also provides us with

new insights into the nature of this concept:

Dear Carl,

Find on the map of Ireland the island Inisbofin (Island of White Cow) and you’ll understand where I am. But I reassure you that you won’t find it. And this is probably for the better, for if judged by the level of deprivation reigning here there has to be no place for it on the map of our flourishing world.

It is indeed something remarkable. In its poverty it is superior (if one can speak of superiority in that sense) even to my village.480 There is no food here apart from mackerel and shellfish. Money plays here no role. Nothing is sold or bought here. There is no electricity and no warm water. The connection to the main land is irregular … There are no news-papers. There are four telephones and I think only two TV sets and they only work when there are batteries.

Terrible wind is blowing all the time. The dark clouds are rushing in front of one’s nose as sporting cars. There are 250 inhabitants on the island. I am the 251st and the 1st Russian who has stepped on this part of the dry land (which is a downright euphemism because of the daily rains).

….

And yet I am glad that I am precisely here and not in London, Paris, Rome, Stockholm, New-York, Leningrad. For it is here that the civilisation ends and the H2O begins. In other words Inisbofin equals Nothing and this is exactly my eparchy/ sphere of influence/ element. (Transl. Z.I.) 481

So, as we see from the letter above, ‘nowhere’, or ‘non-being, or ‘nothing’ represents

for Brodsky a point where the dry land ceases its territory to water, which, as we have seen

previously, was according to Brodsky, the main depository of time (see the passage from

Watermark in the previous chapter). 482 In other words, from a metaphysical point of view,

‘nowhere’ is the point where the space cedes its demesne to time. We have seen that in ‘A

second Christmas’ the author was striving to achieve precisely this standpoint of time to take

a more detached look at the sad developments in his love story; now in exile he does not have

to resort to all those ingenious conceits to achieve it. In exile the detachment is achieved

almost without the interference of a lyrical hero. Brodsky himself elucidates this point in his

essay The Condition We Call Exile:

480 Brodsky is referring here to the village of Norenskaya close to the Arctic Circle where he served his term for parasitism in the Soviet Union in 1964-1965. 481 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Letter to Carl Proffer,’ (June 22, 1972), Brodsky Papers, Box 43 Fld 7. 482 Brodsky, Watermark, pp. 42-43.

186

… one more truth about the condition we call exile is that it accelerates tremendously one’s otherwise professional flight – or drift – into isolation, into an absolute perspective: into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.483

The physical distance between the lyrical hero and his beloved has become by now so

incommensurable that the quantity has turned into quality – the separation has now become

absolute, almost sepulchral in dimensions. In ‘A second Christmas,’ we saw that the lyrical

hero constantly used several means of playing down his sentiments lest he should slip into

melodrama. Here the utter despair of ever seeing his beloved again is so definite, the tragedy

so real, that the lyrical hero manages to articulate his suffering without risking the danger of

slipping into melodrama. (‘writhing upon the stale/ sheets for the whole matter’s skin/ deep

I’m howling ‘youuuu,’’ in Brodsky’s own translation).

And it is the rhythm of the poem that informs the addressee about the radical change

which had taken place in the author’s perspective. If we said that ‘A second Christmas’

resembled a postcard, ‘From nowhere with love’ with its rugged, broken rhythm resembles a

cable wire sent into the ether which struggles to win the enormous space, or much rather,

vacuum separating the recipient from the sender.

‘From nowhere with love’: metrical structure

As is seen from above, the poem is made up of a single 16-line-long stanza and is

written in a ‘purely tonic’, ‘accentual verse,’ or ‘loose dolnik’ depending on the terminology

we choose to adopt.484 This metre, as has been said, is based on the counting of accented

syllables whereas the number of unaccented is variable. Sometimes, as suggested by

Zhirmunsky, this causes a slackening of the rhythm and approximation of the verse to the

prose or colloquial rhythms:

The stronger are the variations in the syllabic structure of the inter-accentual spaces… the greater is the number of unaccented syllables between the ictuses, the more difficult it becomes for the main accent to maintain the unity with the unstressed syllables; as the result the verse becomes less ordered rhythmically approximating the

483 Brodsky, ‘The Condition We Call Exile’, On Grief And Reason, p. 32. 484 See also: Zhirmunsky, Teoria Stikha, pp. 163-168.

187

colloquial speech or literary prose whose main characteristic is the natural freedom in the distribution of accents.485

In fact at a glance at the original of the poem, its metrical structure does not

immediately transpire and consequently the detection of its real rhythm might represent some

difficulty for a reader: not only the number of unstressed syllables between the stresses is

variable here, but also the number of stresses themselves per line is also irregular. Among

poem’s 16 lines there are:

9 lines containing 4 stresses: lines 1,2,3,6,7,12,13,14,15

6 lines containing 5 stresses: lines 4,5,8,9,10,11

1 line containing 3 stresses: line 16

At the same time we have here some important secondary elements of metrical

organisation – sound vowel and consonant instrumentation, enjambments, caesuras and most

importantly the rhymes. Iuri Lotman points out that those elements that usually do not play a

structural role in the everyday speech contribute to the creation of poetic rhythm in verse:

Der Rhytmus ist im Vers ein bedeutungsdifferenzierendes Element, wobei der bedeutungsdifferenzierende Charakter, wenn er die rhythmische Struktur erfaßt, auch diejenigen Elemente der Sprache ergreift, die ihn im normalen Sprachgebrauch nicht aufweisen.486

Arguably the poem in question is as rhythmic and well-organized as any of Brodsky’s

poems written in classical syllabo-tonic metres. To illustrate let us turn again to the theory of

verse composition.

Verse theory: a poem in dolnik

Iuri Lotman states that Zhirmunsky laid down the foundations for modern rhyme

theory. As early as 1923 Zhirmunsky saw in rhyme not merely an overlapping of sounds, but

485 Zhirmunsky, Teoria Stikha, pp. 163-164. Original text: «Чем более резкие колебания возможны в слоговом составе межударных промежутков, вообще – чем больше число неударных между ударениями, тем труднее объединяется неударная группа главенствующим ударением, вследствие чего стих оказывается как бы менее упорядоченным в ритмическом отношении, приближаясь к естественной свободе в расстановке ударений разговорного языка или литературной прозы...» 486 Jurij M. Lotman. Die Analyse des poetischen Textes. p. 65. The following is the original quote: «Ритм в стихе является смыслоразличающим элементом, причём, входя в ритмическую структуру, смыслоразличительный характер приобретают и те языковые элементы, которые в обычном употреблении его не имеют.» Iuri Lotman, O poetakh i poezii, p. 55.

188

a phenomenon pertaining to rhythm. 487 In fact Zhirmunsky wrote: ‘To the phenomenon of

rhyme we have to attribute every sound repetition which has an organising role in the metrical

composition of a poem’488 (Transl. Z.I.)

As we have mentioned earlier, Zhirmunsky suggests that we begin to discern ‘those

regularities called meter’489 only if we regard the poem in its entirety: no isolated line taken

outside of its context can disclose the metrical pattern. In practice this, however, does not

mean that one necessarily ought to read the entire poem before detecting its metrical structure,

for Zhirmunsky suggests that:

Within an established literary tradition we always have sufficient experience to recognise the meter at once, that is, to interpret correctly a given alternation of stresses by relating it to a known metrical type.490

The quotation above shows that experience as a poetry reader makes one familiar with

certain types of traditional verse structures and helps one to detect the correct metrical

structure of any given poem. The reader’s easy recognition of a poem’s metre presupposes a

certain familiarity with verse tradition of his country. For Viktor Zhirmunsky who wrote the

quotation above during the 1920’s in Russia, such a familiarity with the established literary

tradition among poetry readers was to be taken for granted. However, on the other side of the

globe just two decades later, such a familiarity was no longer a self-evident phenomenon. As

early as 1947, Auden, who had by then taught at several universities in the USA lamented this

lack in his American students: ‘It’s amazing how little students know about prosody. When

you teach a college class, you find they read either as straight prose or as deadly monotonous

beat as in Gorboduc’.491

What happens then, when we are not familiar with the given literary tradition? Can we

then work out the metrical structure of a given poem and perceive its rhythm? And what

487 Iuri Lotman. O poetakh i poezii: analiz poeticheskogo teksta, stat’i i issledovaniya, zametki, retsenzii, vystupleniya. [On poets and poetry: analysis of poetical text, essays and researches, articles, reviews, lectures] (St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPB, 1996) p. 67. The following is the original quote: «Основы современной теории рифмы были заложены В.М. Жирмунским, который в 1923 г. ... увидел в рифме не просто совпадение звуков, а явление ритма.» 488 «...должно отнести к понятию рифмы всякий звуковой повтор, несущий организующую функцию в метрической композиции стихотворения.» Quoted fromViktor Zhirmunsky. ‘Rifma, ee istoria i teoria’ [Rhyme, its history and theory ] in Zhirmunsky, Teoria Stikha, p. 246. 489 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. p. 66. 490 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. p. 70. 491 Alan Ansen, The table talk of W.H. Auden, ed. Nicholas Jenkins, (London : Boston : Faber and Faber, 1991), p. 28.

189

happens in the case of verse representing an innovation in respect to the established tradition?

Can one learn how to scan it? Zhirmunsky claims:

If, however, we were to put ourselves in the place of a reader who has never heard Russian iambs (for instance, of a reader unaccustomed to the frequent omissions of stress) we would understand the metrical nature of a given poem, (and consequently the rhythmical significance of separate lines) only after gaining an impression of the whole, an impression which would be gained with considerable hesitation and difficulty on our first being confronted with the differing rhythms of separate lines. It is in such a position as this that we approach new and original rhythmic cadences which deform sharply the traditional system: in order to grasp their rhythmical peculiarities we must think of them as variations of a definite metrical pattern.492

Zhirmunsky describes those difficulties which the readers will always encounter when

detecting a new experimental verse metre. Turning to Brodsky, we can say that the passage

above might just as well refer to the ‘difficulty and hesitation’ in understanding the metrical

nature of a given poem on the part of an English reader reading for the first time Brodsky’s

self-translations, because of the deviation from the traditional pattern of English verse, as

mentioned in the previous chapters. At the same time Brodsky’s loose dolniks embody that

kind of experimental verse metre, described above by Zhirmunsky. Such experimental verse

metre is bound to cause initial difficulties also amongst Russian readers reading Brodsky in

original.

Brodsky’s metrical innovations: loose dolnik

As we already know, Brodsky started his poetic career writing in traditional Russian

XIX and XX century metres: iambs, trochees, anapaests, dactyls, amphibrachs. However, over

the years, as Barry Scherr observes, Brodsky developed a verse metre of his own. Already in

‘Chast’ Rechi’ we encounter a number of poems written in the metre called the ‘loose

dolnik’:493

Unlike the so-called classical metres, such as iambic or anapaestic verse, where there is a fixed number of metrically weak syllables between the ictuses (the positions in the line that potentially carry stress in accordance with the metre) the dolnik allows for either one- or two-syllable intervals between stresses.494

Moreover in some of the poems written in dolnik the ‘number of stresses per line may

vary, and some of the intervals between stresses fall outside the usual one or two-syllable

492 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. pp. 70-71. 493 Scherr. ‚To Urania’ in Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem, p. 97. 494 Idem

190

norm’.495 Sometimes it may contain lines of various lengths in which both the number of

unaccented syllables between the stresses and the number of accents per line are variable. In

that case it is more appropriate to speak of accentual or tonic verse or precisely of loose

dolnik.

This unique verse metre of Brodsky had, however, some precursors in the history of

Russian verse. In fact, as Zhirmunsky points out, we encounter this metre as early as in

Pushkin’s fairytale ‘Skazka o Balde’ and later in a number of verse written by Blok,

Mayakovsky and Tsvetaeva. Zhirmunsky speaks of the difficulty such metre represents for

our sense of rhythm and of the danger for this type of verse to be perceived as resembling the

disordered rhythm of spoken speech:

… the dolniki of Blok and, in particular, the purely tonic verse of Mayakovsky was and are considered by many people brought up on traditional syllabo-tonic metrics as non-rhythmical creations. Those readers who regard the poems of Mayakovsky as formless prose have difficulty in finding a metrical common denominator in lines varying so widely in their syllabic structure; not sensing the meter, i.e., the inertia of the rhythmical movement, they lose the feeling for the rhythm itself, as the organized arrangement of syllabic sequences within a specific metrical pattern.496

Zhirmunsky argues, that our rhythmical conscience can overcome this obstacle and,

once we become accustomed to it, we can learn to perceive even very complicated and

contradictory kinds of verse as rhythmically unified; moreover ‘we can even take special

pleasure in the difficulty and internal complexity of such a new form.’497 As Zhirmunsky

further suggests:

Our feeling that such verse is rhythmical is based on our lengthy acquaintance with poetic form, which has gradually taught us to get along without a great many of the most elementary features of rhythmical equilibrium – syllable counting, equal number of stresses in adjacent lines, and so on. As a result of such training we can learn to accept as rhythmical a form of speech that has been systematically deprived of all those signs which originally served as the basis of our rhythmical perception.498

However, in order to acquire this rhythmical perception, Zhirmunsky argues, at least

some of the important secondary factors of metrical organisation have to remain intact. Under

the secondary factors of rhythmical organisation Zhirmunsky understands the following: ‘the

precise coordination of lines and syntactic units, the type of metrical clausula, and especially

rhyme as a means of uniting the rhythmical lines into a structural unit of a higher order (the

495 Scherr. ‚To Urania’ in Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem, p. 97. 496 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. p. 71. 497 Ibid., p. 239. 498 Ibid., p. 240.

191

stanza)’. 499 (italics mine, Z.I.). For example, if the rhymes were also destroyed in tonic verse

or loose dolnik poems written by Mayakovsky, then, according to Zhirmunsky, our rhythmical

sense would loose its last pillar:

In many poems of Mayakovsky, if we were to throw out the rhymes without changing the syllable structure, and shift the syntactic boundaries around by the use of enjambment, we would lose the last support for any perception of rhythm, and the whole edifice, thus deprived of its equilibrium, would turn into a heap of debris.500 (Translation corrected by Z.I.)

Thus, as is shown by Zhirmunsky, in this new kind of tonic verse the presence of

rhymes substitutes the ‘primary element of metrical organisation’ – the metre.501 That this was

also true of the poems written in loose dolnik by Brodsky will be shown in an example of the

translation of the poem, ‘Niotkuda s liubov’iu’. The fact that Brodsky wrote his tonic verse

many decades later than Mayakovsky and others, who experimented with new types of verse

in the meantime, is irrelevant as the Russian trends have remained largely very conservative

and have based themselves on classical syllabo-tonic tradition up until very recent times. As

one characteristic example of it one might mention a letter which Solzhenitsyn wrote to

Brodsky on 14 May 1977 accusing the latter of ‘destroying the rhythm of the Russian verse’

with his poems written in loose dolnik.502

‘From nowhere with love’: in search of its verse metre (alias rhythm)

In the Chapter Six I discussed the principle of metrical task as it was formulated by

Zhirmunsky. In the process of poetry composition the metrical impulse exhibits its organising

influence in all strata of the lexical material. Let us now consider the poem, ‘Niotkuda s

liubov’iu’ and try to register the various levels, on which this organisation of lexical material

occurs.

499 Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. p. 239. 500. Zirmunskij. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. p. 240. The Russian text is as follows: «Во многих стихах Маяковского, если уничтожить рифмы, не изменяя слогового состава, переместить границу синтаксических групп с помощью переноса, мы утратим последнюю опору для ритмического чувства, и здание, потерявшее равновесие, превратится в груду развалин.» Quoted from Victor Zhirmunsky. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory]. (Leningrad: Sovetsky Pisatel, 1975) p. 231. 501 Zhirmunsky, Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory]. p. 248. 502 Alexander Solzhenitsyn. ‘Letter to Brodsky,’ (17 May 1977), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 25.

192

Distribution of vowels and consonants

The first elements to undergo rhythmical distribution are the vowels and consonants.

503 Whenever we encounter organized distribution of stressed vowels – we speak of harmony

of vowels. To relate the aforesaid to the poem in question let us turn to the examples:

- ‘nàdtsatogo martobrià’ (harmony with a),

- ‘i poètomu dàl’she tepèr ot tebià’ (e-a-e-a),

- ‘pòzdno nòchyu’ (harmony with o)

- ‘chèrt litsà, govorià otkrovènno’ (e-a-a-e) etc.

A rhythmically ordered distribution of consonants is known under the name of

alliteration or consonance; again here are some examples from the poem:

‘uvazhàyemyi – vàzhno – dazhe – uzhe – vash – derzhàvshegosia – bòlshe – dàl’she –

usnùvshei’;

‘v temnotè vsem tèlom’.

Caesuras and enjambments

Other elements of metrical composition are caesuras and enjambments. Caesura is a

division of a single line which is repeated line after line and designed to facilitate the

perception of its rhythm.504

Enjambment – the continuation from one line into the next – usually serves an

opposite purpose from a caesura as it creates tension by placing, at the beginning or at the end

of a line, a word which is not syntactically connected to it, but instead to the line preceding or

following it.505 Brodsky, as we know, extensively used enjambments.506 Alongside their

‘normal’ role of creating tension and introducing syncopating effects in verse, in the present

poem, enjambments assume yet another more prominent role. In combination with both the

caesuras and the rhymes, the enjambments trouble the ‘normal’ rhythm of the poem so

consistently that it becomes its main structural device, actually creating the poem’s rhythm.

503 See also: Osip Brik. Two Essays on Poetic Language (Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1964) pp. 23-25. 504 See also: Mikhail L. Gasparov, Russkii Stikh nachala XX veka v kommentariyakh [Russian Poem of the beginning of the XX century in commentaries] (Moskva: “Fortuna Limited”, 2001) p. 82. 505 See also: Ibid., p. 34. 506 See also: Scherr. ‚To Urania’ in Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem, pp. 94-95.

193

Rhymes as metrical device

Rhymes, as has been pointed out in the earlier, play the most prominent role in the

metrical organisation of the poem. The role of rhymes becomes particularly relevant for the

metrical organisation of the poem when we are dealing with verse written in tonic verse, or

loose dolniks:

The greater the freedom of the metrical construction of the poem the more important is the presence of rhyme as a device of metrical composition.507 […] In the absence of the customary regularity and system in the distribution of stressed and unstressed syllables within a separate sequence, the rhyme turns into a particularly important property of metrical composition: without the rhyme such verse could pass for prose.508

Having established the fact of the irregularity in the distribution of accents as well as

of the inter-accentual spaces between them peculiar to the poem under discussion, we might

conclude, especially in the light of the aforesaid, that the main certainty our rhythmical sense

gets, is that from the presence of rhymes. Alongside the recurring pattern of enjambments, the

eight pairs of alternating masculine and feminine rhymes – aBaBcDcDeFeFgHgH – appear to

be the only pillars supporting our rhythmical sense in the poem Niotkùda s lyubòv’yu.

Eventually with the help of secondary elements of metrical composition described

above as well as thanks to the fact that ‘our rhythmical sense is very tensile and gets used to

relate to a single metrical law some very diverse and free types of rhythmical variations’509

the Russian reader should be able to detect the poems’ rhythm. One is also helped by the fact

that ‘in poetry there is an additional typographical division into separate lines as opposed to

prose where the text is divided into bits only by syntax’.510 In verse, however, as opposed to

music we do not have notation. As a consequence, this rhythm will always be the result of

tension between these structural elements of metrical composition and the real rhythm of

human speech. This tension might also be responsible for important artistic effects. Arguably

Brodsky did not resort to any special graphical representation of the poem which would

‘facilitate’ the apperception of the poem’s rhythm, as for example lesenka (stairs) or stolbik

507 Zhirmunsky, Teoria Stikha, p. 248. Original text: «Чем свободнее метрическая конструкция стихотворения, тем важнее присутствие рифмы как приёма метрической композиции». 508 Ibid., p. 376. Original text: «При отсутствии привычной закономерности и системы в расположении ударных и неударных слогов внутри отдельного ряда, рифма становится особенно важным признаком метрической композиции: без рифмы такие стихи могли бы показаться прозой». 509 Ibid., p. 168. 510 See also: Gasparov, Russky Stikh nachala XX veka v kommentariyakh, p. 33.

194

(column) – methods often used by Mayakovsky – precisely because he wanted to preserve

this tension.511

If I have permitted myself to give here a different graphical representation of the

poem, it was done firstly for illustrative purposes as an attempt to approximate one of the

ways of reading of its rhythm, under the consideration of some of the elements of its metrical

organisation described above. I have based my reading of the poem’s rhythm on the

recordings of Brodsky’s own reading of it. At the same time I wanted to draw attention to

some additional strata of euphonic organisation of the poem, i.e. to demonstrate the role of

secondary elements of metrical organisation in the creation of the rhythm of the poem:

Niotkùda s lyubòv’yu,/ u o nàdtsatogo martobrià,// a a dorogòi uvazhàyemyi mìlaya,/ o a i no ne vàzhno enj. dazhe ktò,/ a o ibo chèrt litsà,/ govorià enj. otkrovènno,/ e a a e ne vspòmnit’ uzhè,/ o e ne vàsh,/ nò enj. i nichèi a o e vèrnyi drùg e u vas privètstvuyet s odnogò enj. is piatì kontinèntov,/ e o i e derzhàshchegosia na kovbòyakh;// a o ya liubìl tebia bòlshe,/ i o chem àngelov i samogò,// a o i poètomu dàl’she tepèr ot tebià,/ e a e a chem ot nìkh obòikh;// i o pòzdno nòchyu,/ o o v usnùvshei dolìne,/ u i na sàmom dnè,// a e v gorodkè,/ e zanesiònnom snègom o e po rùchku dvèri,// u e izvivàias’ nòchyiu na prostynè –// a o e kak ne skàzano nìzhe a i po kràinei mère –// a e ya vsbivàiu podùshku a u mychàshchim „tý” a y za moriàmi, kotòrym a o kontsà i kràia,// a a v temnotè vsem tèlom e e tvoì chertý,// i y kak bezùmnoe zèrkalo povtoriàya.// u e a

511 Brodsky often expressed his scepticism about these famous devices of Mayakovsky discarding them as cheap

tricks which would become apparent if one was to re-write Mayakovsky’s verse in normal lines: in fact many of

Mayakovsky’s verse which are traditionally recited with a special rhythm because they were written in lesenka

under a closer scrutiny turn out to be written in classical syllabo-tonic metres. See also Zhirmunsky, Teoria

Stikha, p. 559.

195

The main phonetic mechanism at work here is the reduction of unstressed vowels, a

process of which is probably the most distinctive feature of Russian phonetics. This feature is,

however, not so easily grasped by English native speakers, even those who are familiar with

Russian. A good example of this difficulty can be found in Wilson-Nabokov epistolary

disputes on prosody. Gleaning from the quotation below, we find that it took seven years for

Wilson, who was well-versed in Russian, to discover, with outside assistance, this important

feature of the Russian phonetics:

Gleb Struve came up here to see us in the summer …. I had a long conversation with him about Russian and English versification, which cleared up for me the misunderstandings of our correspondence on this subject several years ago, and I propose to give you the benefit of my enlightenment. The point is, I found out from Struve, that Russian words, however long, have actually only one stress. I had never noticed that Russian dictionaries indicate only one accented syllable, whereas English ones give secondary accents. Thus the emphasis in Russian is different from that of English. … The sophistication of English verse, in the hands of the great poets from Shakespeare to Yeats, consists partly of displacing these accents. There is nothing that corresponds to this in Russian – … there are many fewer stresses and you juggle with these.512

The rule of vowel reduction, which Wilson was trying to describe, consists of the

following: every Russian word, ‘however long’, has one strong accent – all other vowels

become weak or undergoes ‘reduction’. Several years later Nabokov himself stated this rule in

his essay on problems of translation of Pushkin: ‘No matter the length of a word in Russian it

has but one stress; there is never a secondary accent or two accents as occurs in English….’513

In fact, if we look above at my graphic representation of the poem’s rhythmical structure, as

understood from Brodsky’s own reading, we will notice that some of the lines consist of up to

five words and of as many as nine syllables per line and yet carry in actuality just two stresses

(‘no ne vàzhno enj. dazhe ktò’; ‘derzhàshchegosia na kovbòyakh’). As a result the basic rhythmical

line turns out to consist of two beats with some variations of four and three beats per line. And

this happens despite the general irregularity of the stressed and unstressed syllables per

graphic line, which has been pointed out earlier, i.e. four stresses or more per graphic line.

One stress falls not only on one word, ‘however long’, but unites whole groups of

words. Indeed, as suggested by Zhirmunsky, when it comes to accentual verse in Russian the

counting of stresses is not of such a great help for us, for: ‘... in … accentual verse … one

512 Edmund Wilson. ‘Letter to Nabokov from 28 September 1949’. Quoted in: Karlinsky, Simon. Dear Bunny. Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940-1971 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005) p. 255. 513 Vladimir Nabokov. ‘Problems of Translation: Onegin in English,’ Partisan Review XXII (1955), p. 500.

196

strong stress can unite ... extensive accentual groupings of various length; not only words, but

quite often whole phrasal groups...’514 This causes a certain ambiguity of metrical

interpretations of accentual verse –interpretations of what should be ascribed to as accentual

grouping can vary widely, a fact which ‘compromises the whole principle of syllable

counting’.515 In the light of the statements made earlier, my ‘graphic’ representation of the

poem ‘From nowhere with love’ is no more than a timid attempt to convey the poem’s

metrical (alias rhythmical) structure. Ascribing a group of unstressed syllables to one stress is

often a matter of individual reading.

The interplay of the strong rhymes with the succession of four enjambments at the

beginning of the poem destroys the temptation to read the poem as prose. A combination of

secondary elements of metrical composition produces here an organised pattern not inferior to

the one in any poem written in the most traditional of the syllabo-tonic metres and we must

admit that the task of the translator, who endeavours to produce an equimetrical translation of

the poem must have been quite formidable.

‘From nowhere with love’: Weissbort’s translation

Let us now, after this long theoretical digression, finally turn to the translation and

have a look at Weissbort’s version:

From nowhere with love, Marchember the enth, x (asson.) my dear respected darling, but it doesn’t enj. y matter who, since to be frank, the features aren’t enj. x ( asson.) distinct anymore, neither your nor anyone enj. y else’s everloving friend, salutations enj. (asson.) from one (on the backs of cowboys) of the five continents, (asson. o – e) I loved you more than himself or his angels, (asson.) and so now am further from you than from both of them, (asson. o – e) late at night, in the sleeping valley, deep, (asson.) in a small town up to its doorknobs in snow, a writhing on top of the sheets, (asson.) which to say the least, isn’t stated below, a I pummel the pillow, mumbling “you”, b across the seas which have no bounds or limits, (asson.) in the dark, my whole body repeating anew enj. b your features, as in some crazy mirror. (asson.)

514 Zhirmunsky, Teoria Stikha, pp. 550. Zhirmunsky is in particularly referring here to the poetry of Mayakovsky. 515 Ibid., pp. 558.

197

As we see Weissbort preserved both the syntactic caesuras as well as the enjambments

of the original recognizing them obviously as a device pertaining to the metrical structure of

the poem. It must be said, however, that in Russian most of the caesuras were syntactic and

overlapped with the regular orthographic divisions of a prose sentence; whereas in English the

presence of such a great number of commas can hardly seem natural.

As far as the rhyme scheme is concerned, it can be observed that it was not preserved

through the entirety of the poem – there are only two pairs of strong rhymes in the

Weissbort’s translation; at the same time one cannot speak of rhyme’s ‘absence’ either. The

poem is rich in assonance, consonance and alliterations:

- Marchember – enth – respected

- darling – doesn’t – aren’t

- else everloving friend – frank

- backs of cowboys

- cóntinents – both of them – (which can almost pass as an attempt of a dactylic rhyme

in English.)

- pummel – pillow – mumbling

Thus many of the structural divisions of the original happen to be preserved in the

translation and are even supported to a certain degree by the rhymes, in particular towards the

end of the poem. Lastly one must acknowledge that Weissbort did grasp the general tone of

the original and that the contrasts of diction which is a constant tool used with Brodsky are

preserved in a good balance in the translation.

And yet the cumulative effect of these ‘secondary elements of metrical organisation’

(Zhirmunsky) in the absence of strong rhymes – even though the internal ones, as we have

seen, are present in Weissbort’s version – produced in Weissbort’s English translation a

rhythm which was quite different from the one which we have seen in the original Russian.

Although the translation we have before us may be a fine poem in English, I do not wish to

insinuate any judgment here. I would merely like to point out the similarity between

Weissbort’s translating technique with the one used by Zhukovskii and Batyushkov on

Russian literary soil.516 The indifference to the choice of form for a translated poem in these

Pushkin’s predecessors did not suggest, as we said in the Chapter Three, the unity of the bond

516 See also Etkind. Russkie poety-perevodchiki ot Trediakovskogo do Pushkina, p. 145.

198

between a particular form and particular content. Whether such translating approach should

ultimately be considered problematic is too much of a controversial question for us to answer.

One thing is for sure: it represented a problem for Brodsky.

Brodsky’s self-translation based on Weissbort’s translation

Let us now examine the changes Brodsky made in the first draft of his translation of

the poem ‘From nowhere with love’:

From nowhere with love the nth of marchember sir a sweetie respected dear frankly it doesn’t matter enj. B who for memory won’t restore enj a features not yours and no one’s an utter enj B friend greets you from this resting swell (assonance) on the backs of cowboys fifth part of earth (assonance) I loved you better than angels and Him Himself (assonance) and am further from you than from both enj (assonance) of them now late at night in the sleeping vale e in the little township up to its doorknobs in enj f snow writhing upon the stale enj e sheets for the whole matter’s skin f deep I’m howling “youuuu” through my pillow dike g many waters away that are milling near (assonance) with my limbs in the dark playing your double like enj g the insanity-stricken mirror. (assonance)

The first and most striking difference with the translation made by Weissbort is, of

course, the presence of stronger rhymes as well as the fact that the rhyme scheme of the

original is largely preserved. Even though there is some assonance, they are ‘stronger’ than

those used by Weissbort. Another striking change introduced by Brodsky was to remove all

the syntactic caesuras – the poem in translation is a one 16-line-long sentence undivided by

any punctuation. Thus the main source from which the reader derives the rhythmical structure

is now the rhyme (the strong caesuras that they produce), the enjambments and ultimately the

semantic divisions which quite clearly indicate where exactly there must be a caesura:

‘From nowhere with love/ the nth of marchember sir// sweetie respected dear/ frankly it doesn’t matter// enj. who/ for memory won’t restore// enj. features/ not yours and no one’s’ an utter// enj. friend…’

Whether an English reader can ‘with considerable hesitation and difficulty’ eventually

‘understand the metrical nature […] (and consequently the rhythmical significance of separate

199

lines)’ 517 of the poem and whether as a result the poem will become scannable for him

belongs to the sphere of those rhetorical questions which no one in theory can answer, but

everyone must find an answer for himself in practice. One thing is, however, for sure:

Brodsky’s translation when confronted with the one done by Weissbort displays a much more

uneven rhythm. This circumstance did not, however, seem to worry Brodsky much, as we

have seen in the previous chapter, for he considered ‘smoothness’ to be one of the worst vices

of translations of his verse.

Moreover, as we have seen above in the example of ‘Niotkuda s liubov’iu,’ rugged

rhythm was an authentic quality of this poem and, as well as of the other loose dolniks of the

original poems of the cycle. Brodsky naturally enough was aware of this circumstance and

consequently, the prospect of bringing the translations closer to the original must have

presupposed for him a loss of some of their smoothness. This observation paves the way for

potentially the most interesting part of our analysis – the question about the relation between

form and content in the poem, ‘Niotkuda s liubov’iu’. My conjecture is that the main function

of the poem’s rhythm is to inform its addressee of the drastic change, which had taken place

in the lyrical hero’s position in space and time. Accordingly what Brodsky perceived as

certain ‘smoothness’ in the translation was for him unacceptable, for it would have betrayed

the artistic intention of the original.

Semantics of rhymes

„[rhyme] may yield, perhaps, more than the poet himself had in mind to reveal while using it”. (Brodsky)518

In Brodsky’s poetry, rhymes play a particularly important role as was often stressed by

the author himself and as has also been pointed out by some of the critics (Stanislaw

Baranczak, Natal’ia Galatskaia, Barry Scherr) 519:

…a search for the central ideas in a poem often begins with Brodsky’s rhymes. … the

rhymes provide one of the structural cornerstones in many of Brodsky’s poems. Not only do

517 Zirmunskij, Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse, pp. 70-71. 518 Brodsky, Less than one, p. 346. 519 Baranczak, ‘Perevodia Brodskogo,’ p. 249.

200

many of the semantic features of the poem become emphasized through the rhyme words, but

the ordering of lines by rhyme may create natural thematic groupings… 520

Despite having discussed the rhymes of the poem ‘Niotkuda s lyubov’iu’ and its

various translations, we have not yet touched upon an important issue: their semantics. Later I

would like to take a closer look at the rhymes in the poem, recoursing to the method

suggested by Brodsky himself in his analysis of Auden’s “September 1, 1939”521, which was

subsequently adopted successfully by Natal’ia Galatskaia in her remarkable analysis of the

poem, ‘Nochnoi polet’522.

From nowhere with love the enth of Marchember sir a sweetie respected darling but in the end b it’s irrelevant who for memory won’t restore a features not yours and no one’s devoted friend b greets you from this fifth last part of earth x (assonance) resting on whalelike backs of cowherding boys d I loved you better than angels and Him Himself x (assonance) and am farther off due to that from you than I am from both d of them now late at night in the sleeping vale e in the little township up to its doorknobs in f snow writhing upon the stale e sheets for the whole matter’s skin- f deep I’m howling “youuu” through my pillow dike g many seas away that are milling nearer H with my limbs in the dark playing your double like g an insanity-stricken mirror. H

520 Scherr. ‚To Urania’ in Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem, pp. 94-95. 521 Brodsky. ‘On „September 1, 1939“ by W.H. Auden’ (essay), Less Than One, pp. 346-347. 522 Natal’ia Galatskaia. ‘Nochnoi polet’, In Scando-Slavica, Tomus 36, 1990, pp. 84-85

201

Weissbort’s translation Original Russian poem Brodsky’s 1st revised

translation Final version523

A the enth – aren’t Marchember – speaking (martobrià – govorià)

Marchember sir – won’t restore

Marchember sir – won’t restore

B doesn’t (matter) – anyone doesn’t matter – not yours (ne vàzhno – ne vàsh, no)

matter – utter (friend) in the end (is irrelevant) – (no one’s)

friend

C salutations – angels from one (of the 5 continents) –

Himself (s odnogò – samogò)

swell - Himself (fifth last part of) earth – Himself

D Continents – both of them cowboys – from both (kovbòyakh – obòikh)

Earth – both boys – both

E Deep – sheets bottom – sheet

(dnè – prostynè) (sleeping) vale – stale

(sheets) (sleeping) vale – stale (sheets)

F snow – below up to its doorknobs – at least

(dvèri – po krainei mère) its doorknobs in/ snow –

skin/ (deep) its doorknobs in/snow – skin/-(deep)

G You – anew howling “you” – features

(mychashchim“t`y”– chert`y) pillow dike – double like Pillow dike – double like

H limits – mirror limits – reflecting as a mirror

(kràia – kak … zerkalo povtor’àia) Milling – mirror Milling nearer – mirror

As we have mentioned, strong rhymes were not a part of Weissbort’s translation

technique which did not mean, however, that Weissbort did not achieve in his translation a

sort of poetic harmony. However, looking at the chart above, one can observe that

Weissbort’s main criterion in creating rhymes and assonances was their acoustics rather than

their semantics; Brodsky’s endeavour, on the other hand, as is evident from the same chart,

was, among others, to preserve certain words in the rhyming position. For example in the final

translation by Brodsky, we find the expression ‘Him Himself’ (rhyme cluster C) in the

rhyming position just as it was in the original. Brodsky once quoted Akhmatova saying that

one should rhyme the word ‘Lord’ only with certain types of words. He himself, though not

being conventionally religious, however, still kept to this rule. As was already observed in the

Chapter Seven in the course of analysis of the poem ‘A Second Christmas,’ the search for the

same rhyming words in the translation as in the original, is a characteristic feature of

Pushkin’s mimetic translating school.

Another aspect with regard to the semantics of the rhymes in Brodsky has been

pointed out by Brodsky’s Polish translator Stanislaw Baranczak; he argues that the rhymes in

Brodsky’s verse often function as independent puns, as additional displays of his linguistic

wit. 524 Here are some of the plays on the polysemic nature of words, which Brodsky

introduced into his final English version:

523 In the final version I have written in bold letters the rhymes that corresponded directly to the rhymes in Russian and in italics the rhymes that Brodsky preserved from the first draft of his translation. 524 Baranczak, ‘Perevodia Brodskogo’, p. 249.

202

- ‘Marchermber sir – won’t restore’ – a figure which can be found in the tradition of

carpe diem poetry and which suggests that the mere recurrence of the nature’s seasons

cannot restore love because it restores the leaves to the trees and the grass to the earth

every year. (See for instance La Gerusalemme Liberata of Torquato Tasso: ‘Ne perchè

faccia indietro l’april ritorno/ Si rinfiora ella mai ne si rinverde’ ‘Not because April

will come back / will [the rose] ever bloom again’ transl. Z.I. );

- ‘in the end – no one’s friend’;

- ‘its doorknobs in snow – skin-deep’.

The absence of these additional layers of meaning in Weissbort’s version, for all its

other merits, could have prompted Brodsky to make his own revisions, for, as Baranczak

points out, the disappearance of such semantic layers would cause the poem to sound banal.525

Conclusion

In the Chapter Eight, I have been trying to deal with the metrical specificity of the

poems from Brodsky’s cycle, ‘A Part of Speech’. On the example of the poem ‘Niotkuda s

liubov’u’ (‘From nowhere with love’) I have shown that in this cycle Brodsky made a

consistent passage from the use of syllabo-tonic verse metres to tonic verse, or loose dolniks.

Loose dolnik is a verse metre, in which the number of weak syllables between the ictus and

the number of ictuses themselves are not fixed as opposed to syllabo-tonic metres. (In iambic

metrical scheme, for example, each ictus is preceded by just one weak syllable). I have tried

to show the connection between Brodsky’s passage to this metrical form and the content of

the poems of the cycle: the emergence of the theme of exile. Following his involuntary

emigration from Russia this theme becomes a true leitmotif in Brodsky’s poetry, which, in my

view, is directly connected to Brodsky’s experiments with new verse metres.

In Chapter Eight, using Zhirmunsky’s verse theory, I tried to show that in verse

written in dolniks, rhyme has a particularly important role as a device of metrical

organisation. The chapter also shows that Weissbort translated the poem introducing weak or

slant rhymes which he believed to be ‘more appropriate in English.’ In his epistolary polemic

with Weissbort, Brodsky argued that rhyme and metre had completely disappeared in

Weissbort’s translations of the poems from the cycle (see Chapter Six). If we consider the

525 Baranczak. ‘Perevodia Brodskogo’, p. 249.

203

correspondence between Weissbort and Brodsky in light of Zhirmunsky’s theoretical findings,

the logic behind Brodsky’s assertions becomes evident. As shown by Zhirmunsky, in dolniks

with the disappearance of strong rhymes, the metrical structure of verse disassembles entirely

as to appear to the reader as plain prose. Thus far from having ‘insufficient ear’ for the slant

rhymes of Weissbort, as was claimed by the latter in their epistolary dispute, Brodsky pursued

the logic of his original poem, trying to recreate it in English in the same form, according to

the principles of mimetic translation set by Pushkin.

By stating this, I am not trying to deny the theoretical possibility of slant rhymes

having occasionally the same function in English poems as strong ones have in Russian. My

principal goal has been to elucidate the logic behind the self-translating decisions of Brodsky,

which had so far either puzzled the critics and co-translators or had been erroneously ascribed

to Brodsky’s limited ability in English.

As I have pointed out in the Chapter Eight, the verse metre Brodsky used in the poems

of the cycle, ‘Chast’ Rechi,’ (‘A Part of Speech’) seemed innovative to many Russian readers.

As shown by Zhirmunsky, an easy apperception of poetry’s metrical structure presupposes a

certain familiarity on the part of the reader with his native metrical tradition. As a result, when

confronted with new and experimental verse metre, readers approach it with ‘difficulty and

hesitation’ as they are accustomed to the traditional patterns of their native metrical system.

Brodsky was aware that many of his Russian readers experienced such difficulties when

dealing with his metrical innovations. That a similar difficulty was experienced by his English

readers who read his self-translations must have reassured Brodsky that his translations were

“faithful” to their originals.

Appendix

‚ Ниоткуда с любовью,’ Russian original from ‘Часть Речи’:

Ниоткуда с любовью, надцатого мартобря, дорогой, уважаемый, милая, но не важно даже кто, ибо черт лица, говоря откровенно, не вспомнить уже, не ваш, но и ничей верный друг вас приветствует с одного из пяти континентов, держащегося на ковбоях; я любил тебя больше, чем ангелов и самого, и поэтому дальше теперь от тебя, чем от них обоих; поздно ночью, в уснувшей долине, на самом дне, в городке, занесенном снегом по ручку двери,

204

извиваясь ночью на простыне – как не сказано ниже по крайней мере – я взбиваю подушку мычащим «ты» за морями, которым конца и края, в темноте всем телом твои черты, как безумное зеркало повторяя.526

526 Brodskii. Stikhotvorenia. Poemy, p. 425.

205

Chapter 9: The North buckles metal

Verse metre

‘…he deserves only the North of our country.’ (from a letter by Nadezhda Mandelstam)

The poem ‘The North buckles metal’ brings us back to our initial discussion (See

Chapter Three) of Benjamin’s notion of original’s intentio. To preserve it, according to

Benjamin, is an essential part of the translator’s task. In the case of Baudelaire it was

appropriate for Benjamin to speak of the intentio as pure language. In translating Baudelaire

this intentio was supposed to be freed, in Benjamin’s view, from the fetters of concrete

meanings – meanings which spring from some kind of given reality. As opposed to

Baudelaire, in Brodsky’s post-Acmeist poetry the meaning, as we have already established, is

inseparable from the intentio. (See Chapter Three).

By this token the problem with rendering the intentio of some of Brodsky poems lies

precisely in the specificity of that given reality, which the translator should endeavour to

convey in translation. In this respect ‘The North buckles metal’ is a rather exemplary case of a

poem whose referential background is constituted by realities having no equivalent in the

historical arsenal of anglophone populations. Brodsky, who always tended to diminish the

contrasts between English and Russian poetical traditions, was the first to point out in an

interview this, albeit quite negative, peculiarity of Russian cultural reality in the XXth century:

… Russian culture is part of Christendom; that is, we are just one aspect of it and our set of values, not to mention many of our practices, are quite similar. Therefore, I don’t believe the language creates […] a barrier. What creates this barrier is some historical reality, which for most of the century was politically different from the reality of the realms of Romance and Germanic languages. […] In the twentieth century, a completely new society emerged. So translating a sentence from Russian prose depicting life in the communal apartment into English is practically impossible. In the first place, what is a communal apartment? So practically every sentence will require a footnote. (Transl. Z.I.) 527

The realities of Soviet life referred to above, exotic to the Western reader who has no

knowledge of them, are often responsible for creating even greater translation barriers than

those arising from the ‘simple’ prosodic contrasts between the two languages. The absence of

527 Volkov, Solomon. Dialogi s Iosifom Brodskim [Conversations with Joseph Brodsky]. (Moskva: Izd. “Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, 1998), p. 183.

206

the semantic equivalent in the target language sets as it were both the author-translator as well

as the co-translator into the same pioneering position. They both are obliged to invent

something in the target language, which has not been there before.

In the course of the discussion of the translations of the poem ‘North buckles metal’ I

will try to show how both the translator as well as the author-translator tried to bridge these

hurdles of translation. I will endeavour to investigate whether my hypothesis is true that in

dealing with this category of the original poems, Brodsky being both the author as well as the

translator played a crucially helpful role. His first hand experience of the realities described

must have given Brodsky clear advantage over his co-translators, for he knew exactly what

was the initial intentio of the original as well as what the exact effect was he wanted to

produce on the reader.

Using the interlinear translation as the point of departure, I will first discuss some

general aspects of the poem’s meaning, which were likely to represent major difficulties for

the translator. Later, I will pass to stanza-by-stanza comparison of Weissbort’s version of the

translation with the ultimate recasting of it by Brodsky.

‘The North buckles metal’: meaning

First the interlinear translation followed by the original:

Interlinear by Stephen White (from the Beinecke library):

The North crushes metal, but it spares glass. a It teaches the throat to pronounce “let (me) in.” b The cold brought me up and put a pen into a (my) fingers in order to warm them, cupped. b Freezing, I see that beyond the seas c the sun is setting, and no one’s around. d Either the heel slips on ice, or the earth itself c is becoming round under the heel. d And in my throat where there’s supposed to be laughter e or speech or hot tea f ever more clearly resounds the snow e and, like a kind of Sedov, looms the black “farewell.” f Sever kroshit metall, no shchadit stekló. a Uchit gortan’ progovorit’ “vpustí”. b Kholod menia vospital i vlozhil peró enj. a

207

v pal’tsy, chtob ikh sogret’ v gorstí. b Zamerzaya, ya vizhu, kak za moriá enj. c solntse saditsia, i nikogo krugóm. d To li po l’du kabluk skol’zit, to li sama zemlyá enj. c zakrugliayetsia pod kablukóm. d I v gortani moyei, gde polozhen smékh e ili rech’, ili goryachiy chái, f vsio otchotlivei razdayotsia snég e i cherneet, chto tvoi Sedov, “proshchái”. f

In the last poem to be discussed, ‘The North buckles metal’, the poem’s metre seems

to have been less of a problem for a translator than was the case with the poem ‘From

nowhere with love’. Here the translator had before him a Russian poem written in a relatively

regular form of tonic verse (dolnik or rather taktovik528 with a tendency towards dactyl – a

poetic metre for which it does not seem altogether impossible to find an equivalent among the

traditional forms of English folk versification). As mentioned before, the poem had other and

by that not necessarily less prominent obstacles on the way of a translator.

When Pushkin wrote in the opening stanzas of Eugene Onegin “but harmful is the

North to me”529 this was an ironic semi-veiled reference to his exile from Saint Petersburg

(‘the North’) to Bessarabia. Similarly the word ‘North’ at the opening of the Brodsky poem

under discussion brings up an immediate association with the exile of its author. In

contradistinction to his great predecessor, Brodsky’s exile was not from the North to the

South, but from a relative North (Leningrad) to the farthermost one: in 1964 Brodsky had to

leave his native Leningrad to serve his sentence of five years of hard labour on a collective

farm near the White Sea ‘in the small village [Norenskaya] lost among swamps and forests,

near the polar circle’.530

In the poem Brodsky makes, as we said, allusions to his Northern confinement, but it

is clear that he does so neither in order to emphasize its penitentiary character, nor to make a

meal of the degree of injustice he had suffered there. Such an approach, as I mentioned in

Chapter Five, Brodsky considered to be lethal for literature. On the contrary, his assertion that

528 Dolnik is a variety of tonic verse wherein the number of unaccented syllables between ictuses varies from 1 to 2 syllables; taktovik allows for a greater variety of unstressed intervals between the ictuses: from 1 to 3 or from 0 to 2. See also Georgi A. Shengeli. Tekhnika stikha [Verse technique] (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1960). 529 Pushkin, Aleksandr. Eugene Onegin, Translated from the Russian with a commentary, by Vladimir Nabokov, (NY: Bollingen, 1964), p. 96. 530 Brodsky, “To Please a Shadow”, Less than one, p. 361.

208

the North had raised him and that the emergence of his artistic vocation itself is attributed to it

contains more than a grain of gratitude (‘The cold educated me and put a pen/ into my

fingers’). This can be, of course, interpreted as a kind of variation on the Nietzsche’s famous,

“what does not kill me makes me stronger.”531 Such an interpretation, however, cannot be

made without great reservation, for Brodsky was the first to maintain scepticism about any

theories implying beneficial effects of suffering upon an artist:

It’s an abominable fallacy that suffering makes for greater art. Suffering blinds,

deafens, ruins, and often kills. Osip Mandelstam was a great poet before the

revolution. So was Anna Akhmatova, so was Marina Tsvetaeva. They would have

become what they became even if none of the historical events that befell Russia in

this century had taken place: because they were gifted. Basically, talent doesn’t need

history.532

How should we then account for this association between the harsh experiences of

cold with the emergence of poetical vocation? A hint towards a possible explication comes

from Auden, namely from his sonnet ‘Rimbaud’:

The nights, the railway-arches, the bad sky, His horrible companions did not know it; But in that child the rhetorician’s lie Burst like a pipe: the cold had made a poet.533

Looking first at the quatrain above we discover a sophisticated metaphysical conceit

which extends, quite in the manner of Donne a parallel between an abstract idea and a visual

image of a physical phenomenon. In this metaphysical conceit of Auden the abstract idea that

the existential experience of cold and deprivation which young Rimbaud had suffered during

his flights from home to Paris had rendered him immune to the false rhetoric of the Parisian

symbolist salons is conveyed with the help of the visual image of a radiator which goes bust

in the winter when the water freezes inside.

Oddly enough many Russian readers might find themselves to be particularly well

equipped to appreciate what might otherwise seem a slightly mind-boggling metaphysical

conceit due to their unfortunate familiarity with radiators bursting in the dead of winter. (Hot

water in the country used to be, and still is in the most parts, produced in central locations and

531 “Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker.” (Götzendämmerung. Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens). 532 Brodsky, Nadezhda Mandelstam’s obituary, Less Than One, p. 153. 533 W.H., Auden, Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957. (London: Faber&Faber, 1969), p. 126.

209

then pumped into apartment blocks through miles of leaky, unlagged metal pipes). Because of

this slightly ‘nostalgic’ imagery alone this poem must have been particularly dear to Brodsky

and it is quite possible that he had Auden’s ‘Rimbaud’ in mind as he was writing the poem of

his own.

As direct influences are very difficult to trace in literature – one is influenced by

everything one reads, as has been mentioned earlier in the Chapter Seven – we will refrain

from trying to prove here this barely provable point. Still one cannot help noticing the

underlying similarity between Auden’s ‘the cold had made a poet’ and Brodsky’s ‘The cold

raised me and put a pen/ into my fingers’ – a similarity which lies in the association both the

figures establish between cold, as a form of a harsh existential experience, on the one hand,

and truth, on the other. And truth in poetic language means by extension poetry – poetry being

truth’s main repository.534

This connection between truth and any kind of extreme suffering had been stated again

by Auden in the final speech of Alonso to Ferdinand in “The Sea and the Mirror” (a poem

which left Brodsky in raptures)535:

But should you fail to keep your kingdom And, like your father before you, come Where thought accuses and feeling mocks, Believe your pain . . . 536

By this token, as suggested in the poem above, the actual meeting ground between

suffering and truth is based upon the property of suffering to speak to us in the most authentic

of languages: suffering as it were tunes poet’s ear in to truth like a tuning-fork.

Whatever might be the exact origins of this, let us call it for want of a less inflated

epithet, a ‘metaphysical’ connection between cold and truth, alias poetry, which became one

of the authentic leitmotivs in Brodsky’s poetry. Here are a couple of the most characteristic

examples:

x

534 ‘One of the last modernists, Vladimir Nabokov, wrote that art is “a game of intricate enchantment and deception.” Auden wrote that “In so far as poetry, or any of the arts, can be said to have an ulterior purpose, it is, by telling the truth, to disenchant and disintoxicate.’ Quoted in Edward Mendelson. Later Auden. (London: Faber & Faber, 1999) p. XVII. 535 See also Brodsky, ‘To Please a Shadow,’ Less Than One, p. 372. 536 W.H. Auden, ‘Alonso’ from ‘The Sea and The Mirror,’ Selected poems (new edition), E. Mendelson (ed.) (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), p. 143.

210

For me, other latitudes have no usage. I am skewered by cold like a grilled-goose portion. …. The North is the honest thing. For it keeps repeating all your life the same stuff … (“Eclogue IV: Winter”) (Italics mine, Z.I.) and … prefer blue eyes to brown eyes537 … …For at your last instant it’s better to stare at that which, though cold, permits seeing through: ice may crack, yet wallowing in an ice hole is far better than in honey-like, viscous lies. (“An Admonition”) (Italics mine, Z.I.)

Returning to the poem ‘The North buckles…’ one might also mention here a long

tradition of romanticization of the North by the Russian intelligentsia which goes back to the

poems from Finland by Baratynsky as well as to the banishments of the Decembrists in the

early nineteenth century. The North, which Brodsky encountered in his confinement and

which he had besides already known from the geological expeditions of his early years, was

less romantic, but not less true for that matter:

… it was not exactly the type of the North which is usually described in literature and art and which is so much adored by the Russian intelligentsia. In return it was an authentic one.538 (Translated by Z.I.)

The opening line of the poem contains a metaphysical conceit (‘The North crumbles

metal but spares glass’) which draws a parallel between a scientific phenomenon (different

molecular structures of two materials: a well structured metal vs. relatively amorphous glass)

and a popular belief about the North, actually a common place. According to this belief,

people, who can conform with the rules of society and with the help of their assertive qualities

gain success in it, often break down in the North; vice versa, people seemingly too fragile to

succeed in everyday life – especially due to their honesty and transparency (‘glass’) – are

believed to prove fitter to withstand its challenges.

It seems to me that by recurring to a common place – which by definition always

verges on bad taste – as an opening for the poem Brodsky killed two birds with one stone. On

the one hand, he introduced the theme of the North without directly mentioning its

537 ‘Blue’ or ‘grey’ eyes was Brodsky’s recurrent metaphor of the virtues of the North: ‘virtues of the North: the proximity to an absolute, resolve, reserve, the spirit of responsibility, grey eye.’ Quoted from Brodsky, ‘Learning English’, Box 12 Fld16. 538 Volkov, Dialogi, p. 81.

211

penitentiary associations for himself; on the other, he managed to play down, what he would

have called himself, the ‘upward gravity’ of the main statement of the poem: ‘The cold

educated me and put a pen/ into my fingers’.

The next line ‘[The North] Teaches the throat how to utter “let me in”’– brings us back

to the title of the collection the throat being ‘a part of speech’, or better said, its main organ.

Having to survive in harsh conditions means a greater dependence on others; this in its

turn means swallowing one's pride. In the case of a poet, his ‘organ of speech’ is notably the

lyre, which is why the sentence might otherwise read: ‘the North has imposed humility on my

lyre’. (‘Humility’, said Brodsky ‘is never chosen.’539).

Stanza I: Weissbort’s translation

Now let us have a look at Weissbort’s rendition of the first stanza of the poem:

The North crushes metal but leaves glass intact, teaches the throat to utter: Let me in! The cold raised me and placed in my hand a pen to warm my clenched fist.

The rhyming pattern of the original was the alternating strong masculine rhymes abab

cdcd efef; Weissbort used in his translation what he had himself described as a ‘kind of

oblique or half and quarter rhyming’: intact – hand; in – fist. As we have seen before, such a

poetic technique did not seem sufficient for Brodsky – it lacked, as he argued in a letter to

Weissbort, ‘that element (or device) which creates the sense of inevitability of the

statement’540. Therefore we can imagine that Brodsky would try to improve the rhyme

situation there. Leaving, however, the rhymes aside for the time being, let us address a more

serious semantic problem existing in the Weissbort’s translation of the first stanza – namely,

the image of the last too lines ‘placed in my hand/ a pen to warm my clenched fist.’

Poetry writing has been sometimes associated with ‘warmth emissions’. The most

famous example in Russian poetry with particularly hot emissions is from the poem ‘Prorok’

(‘Prophet’) by Pushkin, whose last line runs: ‘You should scorch with a word the hearts of

men’ (Z.I.) (‘Glagolom zhgi serdtsa l’udei’). Brodsky’s metaphor for poetry writing (‘put a

pen/ into my fingers, to warm them in the cup of the hand’ (Z.I.)) is of a quite different order

539 Brodsky, ‘To Please a Shadow’, Less than one, p. 364. 540 Brodsky, ‘Letter to Weissbort,’ (Dec. 3, 1979), Beinecke.

212

than the one by Pushkin. Brodsky’s metaphor is completely anti-heroic. Far from stressing

any effects poetry might produce on others, it shows, very much in line with Auden’s famous

statement that ‘poetry makes nothing happen,’ the existential character of poetry writing for

the poet. He needs it to obtain some warmth in an existentially very cold environment; he

ultimately needs it to survive.

Indeed there is a huge historical gap between the times of Pushkin when poetry still

belonged, at least partly, to the public domain and the twentieth century with all its horrors of

mass murder. Preservation of warmth is the task of a person in the North; preservation of

one’s soul is the task of a human being in a totalitarian state. Poetry remaining one of the few

means which could help to cope with this Herculean task assumed an existential role.

Preservation of one’s own soul is a far less ambitious plan as compared to Pushkin’s ‘to

scorch the hearts of men.’ This also explains why Brodsky time and again protested against

politicized interpretations of his poetry and stressed his private position (in his Nobel Lecture

Brodsky described himself as “… someone rather private … someone who all his life has

preferred his private condition to any role of social significance”)541. Remarkably enough

Auden identified this quality in Brodsky even after a cursory reading of the Selected Poems

for he wrote in the introduction: ‘Unlike the work of some of his contemporaries, Mr.

Brodsky’s seems to stand outside what might be called the Mayakovsky tradition of “public”

poetry. It never uses a fortissimo.’ 542

These seemed to me to be the reasons why it would have been impossible for Brodsky

to accept the heroically ‘clenched fist’ in the Weissbort’s translation and the stanza had to be

revised even independently from the question of the rhymes.

And yet it is also clear why Weissbort came up with this image: the Russian word

‘gorst´’, which means ‘a handful’, but also ‘a cup of hand’, has no direct equivalent in English

– so a ‘clenched fist’ seemed to come in handy. Brodsky found a different solution.

Stanza I: Brodsky’s version

The North buckles metal, glass it won’t harm; teaches the throat to say, “Let me in.” I was raised by the cold that, to warm my palm,

541 Joseph Brodsky. ‘Uncommon Visage’ (The Nobel Lecture), On Grief and Reason, p. 44: “… someone rather private, for someone who all his life has preferred his private condition to any role of social significance 542 W.H. Auden, Foreword to Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems., pp. 9-11.

213

gathered my fingers around a pen.

As can been seen from above, Brodsky used here the paraphrases of the figure

concisely rendered by the Russian word ‘gorst´’ and at the same time came up with a precise

rhyming couple ‘harm – palm’.

Brodsky’s Russian version Weissbort: Brodsky definite English version:

a Let me in – cup of hand (palm)

vpustí – gorstí (Let me) in – fist (Let me) in – pen

b glass – pen

stekló – peró intact – hand harm – palm

Here as elsewhere we see that Brodsky managed to rhyme in his English version three

out of four words which rhyme in the original, even if some words in the English translation

make part of a different rhyming couple: ‘let me in – pen’, ‘harm – palm’.

Stanza II: Weissbort

Let us move now to the next stanza – first the Weissbort’s version:

Freezing, I see the sun going down over the sea, and no one about. Either the heel slips on ice, or the earth itself arches underneath the foot.

In this translation of the second stanza by Weissbort the rhymes are even ‘weaker’

than they were in his translation of the first one: down – itself, about – foot. On the other

hand, it must be said that euphonically speaking Weissbort succeeds in creating some

assonance which reflects to quite a degree the sound repetitions which were characteristic of

the original poem:

Freezing – see – sun – sea - heel – slips – ice – itself – vowel harmony with long ‘e’ and consonantal harmony with combinations of voiced and voiceless ‘s’ and the liquid ‘l’.

If we consider again the original we will find and interesting pattern of consonantal

repetitions there:

Zamerzaya, ya vizhu, kak za moriá (z m r-z m r) solntse saditsia, i nikogo krugóm. (s-ts; s-ts); (kg-kg) To li po l’du kabluk skol’zit, to li sama zemlyá (tl-tl;lk-lk-kl;pdk;blk;lzt-tlz;lz-zl;lm–ml) zakrugliayetsia pod kablukóm. (zl; kl-lk; pdk; lm; blk)

As we see the second stanza of the poem is particularly rich in consonantal repetitions.

214

It has been shown already by Osip Brik, one of the most influential Russian

investigators into the theory of poetic language of the second and third decades of the

twentieth century,543 who had successfully devised a method of terming, defining and

classifying the repetitions of consonantal groups, that the principles of distribution of sound

repetitions typical of the poetic speech are very closely linked with the problematic of ‘the

relation of the sound structure of the verse to its rhythm and imagery.’ 544 This Brik’s

discovery that the phonic and semantic levels of language intersect in these poetic devices laid

the basis among others for Zhirmunsky’s theory of ‘metrical task.’

Stanza II: Brodsky

Let us now see how Brodsky in his revision of Weissbort’s translation of the second

stanza took up and further elaborated the sound repetitions which had been introduced into the

English version by the translator:

Freezing, I see the red sun that sets (rz – rs; ts – ts) behind oceans, and there is no soul enj. ([z] - [z]; s – enj. – s) in sight. Either my heel slips on ice, or the globe itself (lp-lb sl – sl) arches sharply under my sole. (pl; sl)

First of all we find here two sets of rhymes which are more precise than we saw in

Weissbort’s translation: c. an assonance ‘sets’ – ‘itself’ and d. ‘soul’ – ‘sole’ – an homonymic

rhyme. The expression ‘sun that sets’, which contains a rhyming word ‘sets’ comes directly

from the original (‘solntse saditsia’). An English grammar book would suggest here a

progressive tense – ‘setting’; luckily poetry has its own devices and ‘sets’ seems to work here

just as well as ‘sit’ worked in the famous opening line of the poem ‘September, 1, 1939’ by

Auden: ‘I sit in one of the dives on fifty second street’.

Brodsky’s Russian version Weissbort: Brodsky definite English version:

c behind the seas – earth

za moriá – zemliá (going) down – itself sets – itself

d (no one) around – (under my) heel

krugóm – kablukóm (no one) about – foot (no) soul – (under my) sole

Differing from the translation of the first stanza there are no words in the rhyming

position here which would be semantically the same words in English as they were in the

543 See also Jakobson, Roman. ‘Postscript to Two Essays on Poetic Language by Osip Maksimovic Brik’ (Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1964) pp. 77-81. 544 Osip Maksimovic Brik, Two Essays on Poetic Language, (Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1964) p. 25. Original quote runs as follows: «...принципы ритмического и логического расположения затрагивают вопросы об отношении звуковой структуры стиха к ритму и к образу...».

215

original poem in Russian. What we have here instead are three words which were not present

in the original and whose main role here is to recreate the same interplay of meaning and

sound as it existed in the original. For instance, the epithet ‘red’ seems to have been

introduced into the English version of the poem exclusively out of euphonic reasons:

‘Freezing – red sun’ was meant to produce, in my view, a sonic equivalent of: ‘Zamerzaya –

za moriá’. The same goes for ‘globe’, ‘sharply’ and ‘slips’ which are meant to reproduce on

an English palate the same slippery-stumbling effect which ‘po l’du kabluk’ and

‘zakrugliayetsia pod kablukóm’ produce on a Russian one.

Here as elsewhere we encounter Brodsky’s ability astonishing as a non-native speaker

to come up with assonance, consonance and alliterations in his English self-translations,

which if not surpass, at least match his originals in the quality of euphonic-semantic

connections. The presence of an ‘ear for English’ can hardly be denied Brodsky, if one only

considering the example above.

Interesting from the semantic point of view is the plural form in the original “za

moryami” (‘beyond the seas’), which Weissbort rendered as singular (‘over the sea’) and

Brodsky restored as plural (‘behind oceans’). These ‘seas’ in plural convey in the original the

sense of an insurmountable distance which separated the author from the rest of the world. As

the result the rest of the world seemed to have shrunk to a slippery ball underneath the main

protagonist thus completing the image of absolute loneliness.

Stanza III: Weissbort

Let us move to the next stanza first in Weissbort’s rendition:

And in my throat, where laughter, or speech, or hot tea is the norm, the falling snow rings clear and your “farewell” is dark as Scott wrapped in a polar storm.

In the version above we have one set of precise rhymes (‘norm’ – ‘storm’) which, as

we will see, withstood the author’s correcting pen; in return the words of the second rhyming

couple did not rhyme at all (‘speech’ – “farwell”) (yet one can still detect here an intended

internal vowel assonance between ‘speech’ and ‘tea’ as well as between ‘snow’ and the

rhyming couple ‘norm’ – ‘storm’).

As far as the Russian version of this stanza is concerned, the word ‘magical’ seems to

me to be the most appropriate epithet to describe the first rhyming couple ‘smekh’ – ‘sneg’

216

(laughter – snow). First of all it is completely unexpected by the reader that the verb

‘razdayiótsia’ (resounds) should be followed by the word ‘snow’, even though each

Northerner is, of course, familiar with the crunching sound of the fresh snow under one’s feet.

Because of the rhyme with ‘smekh’ (laughter) one is tempted to pronounce the hard sound ‘g’

in the word ‘sneg’ (snow) as ‘kh’ (which corresponds to a more colloquial pronouncing

variety of this word). Thus the rhyme manages to evoke quite realistically the double surprise

of a foot treading upon the snow: the physical surprise of the foot sinking deep in what looks

from outside as an even and solid surface (conveyed through the passage from hard ‘g’ to soft

‘kh’ in ‘sneg’); and an acoustic surprise (achieved by the verb ‘resounds’) from the

unexpectedly loud screeching sound with which this deepening is accompanied. Needless to

say that there was no ‘falling snow’ in the original, which emerged in Weissbort’s version.

Stanza III: Brodsky

Let us now confront the version of the last stanza revised by the author:

And in my throat, where a boring tale enj. (asson.) or tea, or laughter should be the norm, b snow grows all the louder and “Farwell!” (asson.) darkens like Scott wrapped in a polar storm. b

Brodsky’s Russian version Weissbort: Brodsky definite English

version:

e laughter – snow smekh – sneg

speech – farwell Tale – farwell

f tea – farwell

chai – proshchai norm – storm Norm – storm

The translation of the last stanza, as can be seen, suffered the least amount of changes

by the hand of the author. The translator had the right insight attributing to the word ‘farwell’

– the last word and the last rhyme in the Russian poem– an appropriate degree of respect

(most probably the author would have wished to have it as a rhyming word in English also).

Brodsky also seemed to be satisfied with the second of the rhyme clusters Weissbort had

come up with (‘norm’ – ‘storm’); the same went for the substitution of ‘Scott’ for ‘Sedov’. As

opposed to the adherents of certain translating schools which tend to preserve exotic details as

a part of ‘local colour’, Brodsky tried instead to avoid any additional complications of his

English language readers’ task. For, what is supposed to transpire in the translation after all

217

was said and done, as indicated by Auden, is not the exotics, but rather ‘the uniqueness and, at

the same time, universal relevance of a poet’s vision.’545

In that respect, Weissbort seemed to have caught the drift here: what mattered in the

stanza above was the image of a Polar explorer trapped in a snowy and icy wasteland and not

whether he was a Russian hero or an English one; or whether it was the North or the South

Pole that he explored.

It seems important to note that as far as the hero-worship was concerned, even the

Polar explorers had not remained untarnished by Soviet ideology, which just like its Nazi

German totalitarian counterpart, exulted all sorts of self-sacrifice and expected heroic deeds

from its citizens. One might also recall here the famous phrase by Venedikt Erofeev: ‘I’d

agree to live on earth eternally, if first I was shown a corner where there is not always a place

for an heroic deed.’546 (Trans. Z.I.) The same idea is also echoed by Brodsky himself: “anti-

heroic posture was the idée fixe of our generation.”547 It must be said, however, that Sedov

was a less compromised figure than let us say, Puganin or Chkalov.

In the first line Brodsky introduces the expression ‘a boring tale’ not only for the sake

of a euphonically better assonance with ‘Farwell!’ (‘tale’ – ‘farwell’); ‘speech’ in English has

a more public connotation, whereas what the lyrical hero was recalling in his northern exile

was an extremely private ‘podium’ for the Russian intelligentsia: the famous ‘kitchen’ at

somebody’s place in the lyrical hero’s hometown.

‘North buckles metal’: lost in translation

Loss in translation is inevitable – much remains left out after the interventions of the

translators whether left on their own, or checked by the guiding hand of the author ever

anxious to diminish the damage as much as possible. The figure from the last line of the

original version of the poem in question – literally meaning ‘“farwell” blackens in the manner

of Sedov’ – is the proof of inevitability of such ‘collateral damage’ or loss, which is why I

thought it worth a short discussion below.

545 Auden. ‘Foreword’ to Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems, pp. 9-11. 546 Venidikt Erofeev, Moskva Petushki, p. 21: «Я согласился бы жить на земле целую вечность, если бы прежде мне показали уголок, где не всегда есть место подвигу». 547 Brodsky, ‘To Please a Shadow,’ p. 367.

218

Brodsky had not only a special attitude towards words (which will, of course, be true

of any poet), but also towards letters of the alphabet (not only Cyrillic) as well as sounds

which they stand for. Before giving here any examples from his poems I would like to quote

from Brodsky’s unpublished letter to a Swedish publisher in which he put into a nutshell his

conception of letters: “…no matter how much the species might mutate, in the end it is bound

to revert to a letter, and not to an image, because a letter in itself is an ideogram of an

image.”548 As it follows from the quotation above, a letter for Brodsky was itself more than

anything else originally a figure. That this was really so can be seen on the scores of examples

from his poetry. Here just some of them:

often, in some common word, the unwitting pen strays into drawing – while tackling an “M” – some eyebrows ... A traffic policeman briskly throws his hand in the air like a letter X. (“December in Florence”)

Of six-legged letters, your printed betters, your splayed Cyrillic echoes, often spotted by you in days gone by on open book pages (“Fly”)

In the poem Fly above we are dealing with as many as two ‘ideograms’ at once: that of

a fly as well as the one of a Cyrillic letter “ж” (“six-legged-letter”) which corresponds to the

sound „zh“ in English.

Another example of the sort can be found in Brodsky’s late poem written directly in

English called Ab Ovo in which the author creates his play on sounds and images based this

time on some particularities of Italian phonetics – ‘O’ the main vowel of the word ‘eggs’ in

Italian has the shape of the object it describes :549

Ultimately, there should be a language in which the word “egg” is reduced to O entirely. The Italian comes the closest, naturally, with its uova.

548 Brodsky. ‘Draft of a letter to Askold, a Swedish publisher,’ Beinecke, Box 19 Fld 7. 549 At the time of the poem’s composition Brodsky was learning Italian. This information was obtained from Brodsky’s widow Maria Sozzani on January 5, 2005 in Milano, Italy.

219

As we see Brodsky takes the same approach to the sounds letters stand for. An

example most pertinent to our discussion can be found in the poem “Laguna” (“Lagoon”) in

which the bright sound of a Russian vowel ‘a’ in the word ‘proshchài’ (Farwell) is compared

to a broad Venetian piazza; whereas the short, dark and closed sound of Russian ‘u’ in the

word ‘liubliú’ (I love) is associated with Venice’s famously narrow streets. This phonetic

metaphor was thus rendered into English by Anthony Hecht in his translation of Lagoon:

… a broad “So long!” like the wide piazza’s space, … a cramped “I love,” like the narrow alleyways (Lagoon)

Turning back to the last line of the poem ‘The North buckles metal’, we will discover

in the Russian version, “‘Farwell’ blackens in the manner of Sedov,” (Z.I.) yet another, albeit

different, metaphor for the vowel ‘a’ in the word ‘proshchài’ (Farwell). Uttering of this

stressed vowel in Russian presupposes a maximum opening of the oral cavity. Thus the figure

one is supposed to imagine is that of the opened mouth of the main protagonist which

blackens against the background of the ‘snow-white’ desert behind him. This is the ultimate

illustration in the poem of the fact that the North radically challenges our habitual perceptions

about the world – it might seem paradoxical, but the snow ‘resounds’ there, whereas a sound

‘blackens’.

Conclusions

On the basis of the undertaken analysis of the translational materials of the poem ‘The

North buckles metal’ one can make the following conclusions:

1. Content, semantics, tonality

Because of the specificity of the poem on the semantic level – its dealing with

realities very remote to the one’s habitually described in the target language – the author’s

intervention proved to be crucial. In the course of the translation of the poem in question

one can observe how the translator Weissbort, lacking the experience of the realities

described in the poem, often fails to convey the delicate shades of meaning. Brodsky, on

the other hand, restored the correct tonality of several lines of the translation in English.

As the author he knew that the poem’s intentio was not only a reference to specific

realities, which get lost in translation, but also a display of poet’s position towards them:

his intentional reserve and understatement, his refusal to use ‘fortissimo’.

220

In the course of the translation of the poem in question one can observe how the

translator Weissbort often misses to convey the delicate shades of meaning and the

tonality and how the author-translator restores them in English. In some parts of the poem

the author revising the poem performs masterpieces of re-embodiment finding in English

alliterations and consonance which are intimately interwoven with the semantics of the

poem and which produce effects similar to their equivalents in the original.

2. Rhymes

As we saw in Chapter Six in his epistolary discussion over translation with

Weissbort, Brodsky argued that the former’s slant rhymes did not produce the desired

effect of ‘inevitability’ of the poetical statement. Indeed Brodsky’s own tactics in his

reworkings of Weissbort’s translation was to find more precise or ‘strong’ rhymes. We

could also notice the same tendency of Brodsky to try to rhyme occasionally semantically

identical words in English to those which rhymed in the original, as was pointed out in

Chapter Seven.

3. Assonance, consonance, alliterations

As with the example of the translation of the poem ‘A second Christmas by the

shore’ we can again observe that Brodsky chooses certain parts of his translations, in

which to try to achieve the maximum effect of what Derek Walcott referred to as

‘simultaneity of assonances.’550 In the case of the poem ‘The North buckles metal’ that

was the second stanza. The poem ‘The North buckles metal’ represents an example of

how Brodsky sometimes managed to ‘deliver’ the poem’s music from Russian into

English. Such instances alone, in which Brodsky demonstrated an amazing dexterity to

produce in English onomatopoeic effects equivalent to his originals are enough to

discredit the claims of his critics according to which Brodsky lacked an ‘ear’ for English.

4. Verse metre

Brodsky’s translation of the poem ‘The North buckles metal’ represents a case of a

rhythmically felicitous translation. Its rhythm can no more stand the accusation of

Russianness, than the translation version done by Weissbort. This proves that in some rare

cases the metrical contrasts between Russian and English did not stand on the way of the

author-translator and did not markedly influence the rhythmical outcome of the

550 Walcott. ‘Magic Industry,’ p. 2.

221

translations. Arguably such almost impeccably English sounding translational experiments

paved the way to the composition by Brodsky of original verse in the language. These

merit additional discussion, which is bound to remain beyond the scope of the present

thesis.

Appendix

Translated by Weissbort:

The North crushes metal but leaves glass intact, teaches the throat to utter: Let me in! The cold raised me and placed in my hand a pen to warm my clenched fist. Freezing, I see the sun going down over the sea, and no one about. Either the hell slips on ice, or the earth itself arches underneath the foot. And in my throat, where laughter, or speech, or hot tea is the norm, the falling snow rings clear and your “farewell” is dark as Scott wrapped in a polar storm.

Brodsky 1st revision:

The North crushes metal, spares glass; its calm plea “Let me in” smoothes the throats of men. The cold brought me up, and to warm my palm gathered my fingers around a pen. Freezing, I see the red sun that sets beyond the seas, and there is no soul in sight. Either my heel slips on ice, or the globe itself arches sharply under my sole. And in my throat where a boring tale or tea, or laughter should be the norm, snow sounds out ever clearer, and “farewell” darkens like Scott wrapped in a polar storm.

Brodsky’s Final version:

The North buckles metal, glass it won’t harm; teaches the throat to say, “Let me in.”

222

I was raised by the cold that, to warm my palm, gathered my fingers around a pen. Freezing, I see the red sun that sets behind oceans, and there is no soul in sight. Either my heel slips on ice, or the globe itself arches sharply under my sole. And in my throat, where a boring tale or tea, or laughter should be the norm, snow grows all the louder and “Farwell!” darkens like Scott wrapped in a polar storm.

Original poem in Russian from «Часть Речи»:

Север крошит металл, но щадит стекло. Учит гортань проговорить «впусти». Холод меня воспитал и вложил перо В пальцы, чтоб их согреть в горсти. Замерзая, я вижу, как за моря солнце садится, и никого кругом. То ли по льду каблук скользит, то ли сама земля закругляется под каблуком. И в гортани моей, где положен смех, или речь, или горячий чай, все отчетливей раздается снег и чернеет, что твой Седов, «прощай».551

551 Brodskii. Stikhotvorenia. Poemy, pp. 425-426.

223

Conclusions

No great artist ever sees things as they really are; if he did, he would cease to be an artist. (Oscar Wilde).

Brodsky believed in formal translation. It was the legacy of the Russian tradition of

mimetic translation, which has become the main practice of poetry translation in the country

since it was first successfully applied by Pushkin in the first third of the nineteenth century.

Brodsky, an heir of the St. Petersburg Acmeist school, believed that form plays as vital a role

in poetry as content, especially when it comes to the verse of certain poets for whom poetic

form served as an essential compositional principle. In translation of such poets, he believed

that the formal structure of the original, such as rhyme verse metre and stanzaic design should

be preserved above all. While still living in the USSR, Brodsky stuck to these translation

principles in his practices of translating from English and other languages into Russian. His

task of achieving these mimetic translations into Russian was facilitated not only by his talent

as a poetry translator, but also, more importantly, by the properties of the language itself. As a

highly inflected polysyllabic language with great possibilities for rhyme forms, and with the

tradition of formal verse writing still in vigour, Russian lent itself particularly well to the

endeavor of mimetic translation.

After his expulsion from the USSR in 1972 Brodsky found himself suddenly at the

centre of American literary life. In his new role as unacknowledged ambassador of Russian

poetry in America, Brodsky naturally enough expressed himself on the existent English

translations of his Russian poetic predecessors Akhmatova and Mandelstam. Brodsky

maintained that English translations of these poets should convey as many of the formal

qualities of the original verse as possible. He made this assertion in spite of existing Russian-

English contrasts in terms of purely linguistic possibilities, as well as in terms of prosodic

traditions with regard to the formal verse. (The gist of these contrasts is that whereas in

Russian the so called ‘classical’ syllabo-tonic verse metres were still relevant even in the

second half of the twentieth century, verse libre had long become in English ‘an instrument of

our time’; the rhyme stock of English is considerably scarcer than that of the inflected Russian

and the use of the feminine rhymes is rare in English and bears comic connotations.)

Soon, translation of his own verse into English became a matter of Brodsky’s

professional career as an American poet. Supervising the translations of his verse from

Russian into English by other translators, Brodsky set to adjust them in line with his idea that

224

the metrical structure of the original should be preserved above all in translation. This practice

of revisions was not well received by many of his co-translators and met with harsh attacks by

his critics, many of whom claimed that in reworking the translations done by others, Brodsky

infringed upon the rules of English grammar and prosody, and that his self-translations did not

sound at all right in English. Despite these criticisms Brodsky persisted in applying his own

methods of translation, relying gradually less and less on collaboration with other co-

translators. Eventually Brodsky became his own self-translator.

In the present thesis I set out to investigate Brodsky’s translating methods with the

idea of trying to assign them a place within both English literature as well as within the

practice of poetical translation into the language. I began my detailed textual analysis of

Brodsky’s exact translational procedures by investigating the translational materials

pertaining to the poem ‘A second Christmas by the shore’ – materials exemplary in more than

one respect.

Brodsky started out as a ‘classicist’ and ended his career as a great prosodic innovator

in his mother tongue. The poem in question is one of the last poems he wrote in a traditional

syllabo-tonic verse metre, iambic pentameter. George L. Kline was one of the few co-

translators who shared Brodsky’s idea of mimetic translation. In his first translation drafts of

the poem, Kline rendered it in iambic pentameter, which both reproduced the verse metre of

the original poem and, notably, represented the most ‘classical’ of the verse metres of English

poetic tradition. And yet my analysis revealed that in his revisions of Kline’s translating drafts

Brodsky ‘adjusted’ the poem’s metre, introducing into it tetrametric and even trimetric lines.

Basing my inquiry on the prosodic and translational theory of Zhirmunsky, and in

particular, on his theoretical distinction between the concepts of metre and rhyme, it became

possible to explain the mechanisms behind Brodsky’s reworkings of the poem. Far from

looking for metrical equivalents for his originals – something which Brodsky had postulated

in his theoretical pronouncements on translation of Russian formal verse – the poet tended to

deliver into English their rhythmical structure. This can be illuminated by Zhirmunsky’s

assertion that poems with the same metrical structure in two different languages will

inevitably have different rhythmical realisations, depending on the concrete phonetic

properties of the respective living languages. In case of iambic pentameter, typical deviation

from this metre in Russian is manifested in the omissions of stresses in the positions which

are prescribed to be stressed according to the metrical structure of a poem; in English the

225

tendency is the opposite – English pentameters display the presence of additional, or

‘hypermetrical’ stresses.

My hypothesis that Brodsky in his English translations was ultimately seeking the

rhythm (with all its Russian peculiarities) and not the English equivalent of the verse’s

metrical structure is confirmed by Brodsky’s poetry readings. Reading translations of his

poems in English, Brodsky tended to omit stresses on semantically loaded words – a practice

which comes into conflict with English phonetic habits. Moreover, Brodsky’s tendency to

preserve the rhyme pattern caused him to introduce many feminine rhymes into his English

self-translations. While use of feminine rhymes is natural in serious poetry in Russian, they

‘are almost unheard of in English,’552 where they are generally associated with comic verse.

Thus I could conclude that as the result of recasting of the translation versions by his

co-translators, Brodsky was introducing into English foreignising elements on the level of

both rhythm and rhyme.

At the same time, however, what has not been mentioned before by any other

researcher became evident on the basis of Zhirmunsky’s theory of ‘metrical task. As it turned

out, for Brodsky both the metrical scheme with the Russianising rhythmical elements and the

feminine rhyme he applied in his recastings of the translations functioned as authentic

compositional principles in English. The poet subjugated to their dictates all other aspects of

the lexical material. The textual analysis showed that in his translations, Brodsky achieved

what Walcott describes as ‘simultaneity of assonances’553 – Brodsky created in his English

translations harmonies working as authentically euphonic mechanisms in English.

Through the application of textual analysis, it became clear that Brodsky's reworkings

of the translations brought them closer to the originals in terms of content. Many shades of

meanings (metaphorical vs. literal), tonalities, various registers of speech became more

palatable. This faithfulness to the original content is akin to the mimetic principles of the

Russian translating school established Pushkin. Another trait of his translations that links him

to this tradition is his freedom in changing his own original metaphors, images, similies and

puns. Arguably, this seems to be one of the principle factors in promoting his translations to

the status of independent texts in English.

552 Kjellberg, ‘Letter to translators,’ Beinecke, Box 28 Fld 32. 553 Walcott, Derek. ‘Magic Industry’, p. 2.

226

In addition, Brodsky’s rhymes, which demonstrably represented the main mechanism

of his verse composition, were more exact than those proposed by his co-translators: they

displayed metaphysical wit and often worked as independent puns in English. According to

Brodsky’s conception of rhyme as compositional principle, rhyme unravels secrete

connections already existing in the language between disparate phenomena. Thus it becomes

important that in the translation not only certain sounds are rhymed (e.g. masculine or

feminine) but also that certain meanings rhyme as well. This position also sheds light on an

interesting tendency of Brodsky’s to rhyme semantically identical words in English with those

which rhymed in the original. This would seem an impossible task, for the words with the

same meaning rarely also sound similar in two languages as different as English and Russian.

Brodsky, however, repeatedly succeeded in finding such rhymes.

The combination of these phenomena produced a unique and curious effect. Seen from

one angle, the presence of alliteration, assonance and consonance, as well as original

metaphors, similes and puns in his English translations, partnered with the intelligence of

Brodsky’s rhymes in English place his self-translations into the category of authentic and

independent texts of English verse. The bond between their form and content is as inseparable

as it is in Brodsky’s original Russian verse. These translations could not be easily ‘fixed’ or

changed without breaking their harmony and music. On the other hand, this very harmony is

based on compositional principles which are to considerable extent alien to English poetic

tradition.

It is therefore not surprising that there has been no critical consensus about Brodsky’s

self-translations. Their ‘un-English’ quality lying on the surface has so far been the favourite

and the easiest target for most of the critics.

Only a few have acknowledged the enormity of Brodsky’s self-translating undertaking

in view of the linguistic differences and divergent poetic traditions of two languages so

dissimilar as Russian and English. These differences alone are bound to result in inevitable

losses in translation between the two languages.

Derek Walcott:

The agonies of transference from one language to another are incalculable…. A Russian poem cannot be transformed into the same poem in English as its clone

227

replica. The page of the mirror held up to the original will only show deformities, those of the translator. 554

Arguably the observation made by Auden about translation from Greek into English is

just as valid for Russian:

The aesthetic loss in translation from one language into another is always immense; in the case of languages and cultures as far apart as Greek and English, it becomes practically fatal; one can almost say that the better a translation is as English poetry, the less like Greek poetry it is (e.g., Pope’s Iliad) and vice versa.555

As Brodsky showed in his review of translations of Akhmatova and Mandelstam, the

more closely the translations sounded like contemporary verse in English, the less there

remained in them of the original voice of the Russian poets. The loss of the formal qualities

caused these formal poets to ‘perish’ in such translations. As we saw in Chapter Three, the

preservation of the formal qualities of the original is a central element in Benjamin's theory of

translation, echoes of which we perceive, albeit indirectly, in Brodsky's own practice of self-

translation.

Brodsky as a living and self-translating author was first to be aware of the sacrifices

one must face while translating poetry between such languages. In the Introduction to A Part

of Speech Brodsky writes that he had revised the translations at the expense of their

‘smoothness.’ ‘Smoothness’ in his vocabulary has the worst of connotations when applied to a

translation – it stands for that disastrous levelling which occurred in the translations of

Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tvetayeva, Pasternak and other Russians. Those few who were

aware of this levelling acknowledged the merits of Brodsky’s translations, which, at the least,

managed to convey the uniqueness of his poetic voice. Derek Walcott understood Brodsky’s

position:

Brodsky wishes the book to be read as English verse, not as translated Russian. This has its difficulties, its knots, but one is grateful that the knots are there, that the rough nap of the lines is not smoothed over by flatiron of an even English diction, that kind of fatal levelling that has so often made his compatriots, Pasternak and Tsvetayeva, and even as tough a poet as Mandelstam, acquire in translation the sheen and gloss of greeting cards. The kind of translation that turns Doctor Zhivago into Omar Sharif. 556

It was only natural that Brodsky with his deep knowledge of English poetry would try

to oppose this ‘Omar Sharif-effect’ in his own translations and thus opt for a lack of

554 Walcott, ‘Unpublished draft of the essay ‘Magic Industry’, Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 53 Fld 12, p. 3. 555 Auden. Forewords & Afterwords, p. 5. 556 Walcott, Derek. ‘Magic Industry,’ pp. 1-2.

228

‘smoothness’ in them. As to the ‘knots’ and ‘difficulties’ of his English self-translations

mentioned by Walcott, there were other reasons besides just the existence of the Anglo-

Russian poetic contrasts which made Brodsky less worried about them than some of his critics

would have wished him to be.

One of these reasons was the intrinsic difficulty of Brodsky’s original poetry,

sometimes defined as philosophical or ‘metaphysical.’ As a young Russian poet Brodsky was

very much influenced by the poetry of John Donne. In Brodsky’s verse, as in that of Donne

and of other (for lack of a better term) ,intellectual’ poets, the peculiarities of rhythm are

intrinsically linked with the artistic intentions and often reflect the complexities of the poet’s

thought. The reproaches of rhythmical eccentricity directed at Donne, Browning, Hopkins,

etc. were leveled against Brodsky's originals to the same degree as against his English self-

translations. It was this circumstance and not his ‘deafness’ in English which made Brodsky

disregard the criticism of his English self-translation.

Another defense of Brodsky’s against the discouragement of his English language

critics was that he was known as one of the boldest innovators of the Russian verse. In the

period following his emigration he abandoned the ‘classical’ syllabo-tonic verse forms and

made an almost complete passage to ‘tonic’ or accentual verse dolnik. Mayakovsky and

Tsvetayeva experimented extensively with this verse form at the beginning of the twentieth

century. Brodsky took up their experiments and developed his own variety of the metre, loose

dolnik. Some of his conservatively minded Russian readers found Brodsky’s unconventional

rhythms difficult. When similar accusations were levelled by his English language critics,

Brodsky paradoxically enough must have been even more assured of the faithfulness of his

self-translations to his originals

In Chapters Eight and Nine of the present thesis I have analysed the translations of two

of Brodsky’s poems written in loose dolnik, initially completed by Weissbort and

subsequently changed by the author. Making recourse again to Zhirmunsky’s prosodic theory,

I can establish yet another reason why Brodsky disregarded the admonitions of English native

speakers, some of his friends among them, about the inappropriateness of feminine rhymes in

English with regard to his self-translations.

In his verse theory, Zhirmunsky demonstrates that for poems written in dolnik, rhyme

represents the main structural device. and it is the rhymes that ultimately enable us to arrive at

the rhythm. Rhymes are consequently the last pillar for our rhythmical sense when it comes to

dolnik. As further shown by Zhirmunsky, such verse, if deprived of the rhymes, would loose

229

its equilibrium and turn, rhythmically speaking, into ‘a heap of debris.’ Brodsky, aiming at a

mimetic translation in English, evidently preferred that his self-translations have

unconventional connotations in English due to the presence of feminine rhymes in them,

rather than that the slack rhymes proposed by his co-translator Weissbort cause them to lose

their rhythmical structure altogether.

One of the questions which has puzzled many of Brodsky’s scholars and critics is to

understand the actual motivation behind Brodsky’s active participation in his self-translations.

In an epistolary row which ensued between Brodsky and his translator Weissbort over the

translation of the cycle of poems ‘A Part of Speech.’ Brodsky repeatedly claimed that his

main driving force in undertaking corrections to others’ translation versions was his special

attitude towards the English language and poetry – his almost obsessive love of it (‘…his

manifest love for English verse, which amounts almost to a possessiveness…’ (Heaney).557)

Such claims might sound paradoxical in light of the accusation of the ‘un-Englishness’ of

Brodsky’s self-translations, yet alongside with other previously undiscovered archival

materials, they led me to conclude that these experiments of self-translation should be seen

within a framework of what one might call Brodsky’s much ‘bigger plan’. This ‘bigger plan’

of Brodsky’s was to exemplify, through his self-translations the possibilities and the

advantages of formal verse as a compositional principle over free verse.

As early as in his first publication in the West, Brodsky expressed his idiosyncratic

views on American poetry: his predilection for such poets as Wilbur, Auden, Frost, Viereck

etc., – the remnants of a formal tradition in English language poetry, as opposed to the

majority of more en vogue poets using verse libre. According to Brodsky’s view, highly

unpopular among Anglo-American literary circles, metre and rhyme were far better means to

express the modern sensibility than free verse: ‘…a regular meter and exact rhymes shaping

an uncomfortable thought are far more functional than any form of free verse.’558 Brodsky

thought it important to resist the urges of modernism, which in poetry manifested itself in a

general deference to free verse as the means of poetical expression. His special attitude

towards English culminated in his ambition to prove the still extant potential of formal poetic

devices for the development of English language verse.

Behind Brodsky’s great project there appears the example of the sudden and

unexpected fruition which took place in Russian poetry between second half of the XVIII and

557 Heaney. ‘Brodsky’s Nobel: What the Applause Was All About’, p. 18. 558 Brodsky, ‘On Richard Wilbur,’ p. 12.

230

in the first decades of the XIX centuries. Chiefly through the practice of poetic translation

carried out by Karamzin, Zhukovskii, Batyushkov and ultimately Pushkin, Russian literature

was able to absorb the achievements of her elder German, French, English and Italian sisters

and make an enormous jump forward, emerging for the first time in history as a world

literature. Brodsky’s love of English poetry, unprecedented in a non-native-speaking poet,

enabled him to envision similar benefits from cross-cultural influence for the future of poetry

in English. Translations of his poems into English served, among other purposes, also as a

testing-ground for such influence.

The existence of this ‘bigger plan,’ his ambition to redress the balance on the

American poetic scene, explains why Brodsky, who was certainly aware of the imperfections

of his self-translations, exposed himself to the merciless attacks of his critics. What has

escaped the attention of many of those critics is the peculiar contradiction of his self-

translations: the fact that, through his revisions, Brodsky succeeded in achieving in his

English translations authentic euphonic-semantic unity, despite founding this very harmony

on compositional principles partly alien to English poetic usage and tradition. Such a

phenomenon sets a unique precedent in the history of poetry translation into English, and once

established, merits a wider discussion in the larger context of the theory of language and

translation.

The discussion of Brodsky’s authentic verse in English is beyond the scope of the

present thesis. And yet arguably, the practice of Brodsky’s self-translation was just a further

means for Brodsky of internalising English language and English poetry in the way that the

translation into Russian of English and American authors served at the beginning of his poetic

career.559

As has been pointed out by some critics, Brodsky’s authentic English verse displays

less Russianness than his self-translations. This is not surprising, if we take into account what

has been mentioned previously of Zhirmunsky’s metrical theory. While writing authentic

verse in English Brodsky was no longer under the influence of the initial metrical task of his

original Russian poems – a metrical task with well defined elements of Russian verse rhythm.

559 ‘During his period of ‘internal exile’ he [Brodsky] would advance his knowledge of English with a bilingual dictionary and an anthology of English and American poetry, laboriously translating the opening and closing stanzas of some poem…’ Quoted from Anthony Hecht. ‚Introduction’ to Joseph Brodsky. A Part of Speech. (London-New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. ix.

231

These poems – about fifty of them alongside the ‘History of the Twentieth century’ –

published in Brodsky’s Collected Poems in English, as well as dozens of unpublished poems

kept at Brodsky Estate at Yale are certainly the part of the same ‘bigger plan.’ They display

wit and intelligence, which are the more convincing for being cast in traditional forms of the

English poetry. I hope one day they will become a subject for a wider study within the field of

English literature. They certainly deserve it.

PostScript

To put into a nutshell the main ideas of a large project is never an easy task. Leo

Tostoi, when asked by someone to sum up the contents of Anna Karenina, famously replied

that to answer the question he should have to write the novel anew. And yet if somebody

asked the author of the present dissertation to define its main vector or idea, I would probably

say that the main polemic impulse at its core has been to contest a common-place opinion that

one can be a poet only in one’s native language. This opinion is responsible for a great deal of

bias against Brodsky’s English verse and it causes his pedantic critics to scour his verse for

grammatical mistakes and overlook the treasures which the poet illegally smuggled into

English. Donald Davie, one of Brodsky’s more ungenerous critics, most characteristically

summed it up: ‘…history supplies hardly one instance of a poet writing to any purpose in

anything but his native tongue.’ 560 Using concrete textual examples on the pages above I have

tried to demonstrate, to the best of my ability, that the opposite is true – namely, that a real

poet can sometimes transcend native boundaries. Whether I have succeeded is certainly not

for me to judge.

More than eighty years ago Marina Tsvetaeva formulated this idea in her letter to

Rilke more succinctly than myself. I would like to conclude this thesis with a quotation from

this letter. The quality of the lines below written in her non-native German speaks, it seems,

for itself:

St. Gilles-sur-Vie, den 6. Juli 1926

Lieber Rainer,

Goethe sagt irgendwo, daß man nichts Bedeutendes in einer fremden Sprache leisten kann – das klang mir immer falsch… Dichten ist schon übertragen, aus der Muttersprache – in eine andere, ob französisch

560 Davie. ‘The saturated line,’ p. 15.

232

oder deutsch, wird wohl gleich sein. Keine Sprache ist Muttersprache. Dichten ist nachdichten. Darum versteh ich nicht, wenn man von französischen oder russischen etc. Dichtern redet. Ein Dichter kann französisch schreiben, er kann nicht ein französischer Dichter sein. Das ist lächerlich. Ich bin kein russischer Dichter und staune immer, wenn man mich für einen solchen hält und als solchen betrachtet. Darum wird man Dichter (wenn man es überhaupt werden könnte, wenn man es schon nicht allem voraus seie!), um nicht Franzose, Russe etc. zu sein, um alles zu sein. Oder: man ist Dichter, weil man kein Franzose ist. Nationalität – Ab- und Eingeschlossenheit.561

561 Marina I. Zwetajewa, Brief Nr. 163: an Rilke. Quoted in Azadowski, Konstantin (Hrg.) Rilke und Rußland: Briefe, Erinnerungen, Gedichte. (Berlin und Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1986), pp. 409-410.

233

Bibliography

Archival Research Materials

I. Joseph Brodsky Archives at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript

Library at Yale University, New Haven:

- Various manuscripts and drafts of Brodsky’s poems in Russian and English, various

versions of the respective translations of the Russian poems and their revisions,

commentaries made by the author and his associates, galley proofs and master copies

entailing subsequent revisions and markings by the author;

- Correspondence of Brodsky with his translators and with his fellow-poets such as W.H.

Auden, Stephen Spender, Isaiah Berlin, Richard Wilbur, Robert Lowell, Anthony Hecht,

Peter Viereck, Howard Moss etc.;

- Recordings of Brodsky’s lectures at The University of Michigan;

- Films of Brodsky giving readings of his poetry; both in Russian as well as in English

translation.

- Brodsky’s diaries available on microfilm.

II. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux Archives at the Manuscript and Archival

Division of the New York Public Library:

- Correspondence of FSG employees with Brodsky and his co-translators regarding the

translation of the poems from Brodsky’s collection A Part of Speech in the years 1975 to

1980. Letters of: Joseph Brodsky, Anthony Hecht, George Kline, Richard Wilbur,

Howard Moss, Alan Myers, Carl Proffer, Roger Strauss, Barry Rubin, Nancy Meiselas

etc.

III. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.: Manuscript and Sound

Recordings Divisions:

- Letters written by Brodsky from his forced labour confinement in the Arctic Circle of the

USSR in the 1960’s, previously unnoticed by other scholars.

234

- Brodsky’s letters to Philip Roth.

- Recordings featuring Joseph Brodsky during his period of Poet Laureateship at the

Library of Congress in the years 1991-1992.

Private correspondence

November 2003: Correspondence with Alan Myers (Berlin – London).

November 2003 – January 2004: Correspondence with Peter France (Berlin –

Edinburgh, UK).

January 2005 – December 2007: Correspondence with George Kline (Berlin –

Anderson, SC, USA).

March 2005 – May 2008: Correspondence with Ann Kjellberg (Berlin – New

York).

September 2004 – October 2005: Correspondence with Valentina Polukhina

and Daniel Weissbort (Berlin – London).

March 2005 – May 2006: Correspondence with Alexander Sumerkin (Berlin –

New York).

November 2006 – May 2008: Correspondence with Barry Rubin (Berlin – New

York State).

Private correspondence with many of Brodsky’s friends and collaborators filled some

of the gaps in the archival material. Letters by Alexander Sumerkin, Ann Kjellberg, George L.

Kline, Peter France, Daniel Weissbort and Barry Rubin supplemented what could be learnt

from the archives listed above.

235

Media Sources

"The Poet and the Poem" at the Library of Congress. Joseph Broadky. [Nonmusic

sound recording] Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature (Sound Division, Library

of Congress), 1991.

Poet Laureate/Consultant in Poetry; Joseph Brodsky Delivering a Lecture to Open the

1991-92 Literary Season. [Nonmusic sound recording] Archive of Recorded Literature

and Poetry (Sound Division, Library of Congress), 1992.

Joseph Brodsky Reading His Poems. [Nonmusic sound recording] Archive of

Recorded Poetry and Literature (Sound Division, Library of Congress), 1984.

Joseph Brodsky Reading His Poetry. [Nonmusic sound recording] Archive of

Recorded Poetry and Literature (Sound Division, Library of Congress), 1992.

Joseph Brodsky Reading His Poems in Russian. [Nonmusic sound recording] Archive

of Recorded Poetry and Literature (Sound Division, Library of Congress), 1979.

Joseph Brodsky Reading Poems of Anna Akhmatova with a Talk by Librarian of

Congress James H. Billington. [Nonmusic sound recording] Archive of Recorded

Poetry and Literature (Sound Division, Library of Congress), 1993.

Joseph Brodsky. [Nonmusic sound recording] Kansas City, MO: University of

Missouri, 1990, 1994, Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 56.

Joseph Brodsky [Nonmusic sound recording] New York: Academy of American Poets,

1980, Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 56.

Joseph Brodsky a Maddening Space. [Sound recording] (With Derek Walcott). Unapix

Consumer Products, 1997, Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 56.

236

Interviews (unpublished)

James Billington, 5 February 2007, Washington DC.

Barry Rubin, New York, 7 February 2007, New York.

Derek Walcott, 26-27 October 2007, New Haven.

Richard Wilbur, 1 December 2007, New Haven.

Not into this for copyright reasons

Primary and secondary literature

Works by Joseph Brodsky:

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘Beyond Consolation’ (review), transl. Barry Rubin, The New York

Review of Books, 21:1 (February 7, 1974) Accessed on May 28, 2008

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9613.

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘Carl R. Proffer: In Memoriam.’ A lecture given on 1 April 1985

(unpublished), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Box 43 Fld 12.

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘Exiled Poet Makes Plea to Brezhnev,’ Washington Post (7 Aug

1972).

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘In Memory of Stephen Spender’ in On Grief and Reason: essays.

(New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 1996), p. 459-484.

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘On Richard Wilbur: review’, The American Poetry Review, 2:1,

(Jan/Feb 1973), pp. 12-18.

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘Foreword’ to Alan Myers (ed. & trans.). An Age Ago: A Selection of

Nineteenth-Century Russian Poetry. (London: Penguin, 1989) pp. xiii-xix.

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘Reply to Denise Levertov’s Letter to the Editors’, The American

Poetry Review, 2:2, (Mar/Apr 1973) p. 22.

237

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘Translating Akhmatova’. The New York Review of Books. 20:13

(August 9, 1973), http://www.nybooks.com/articles/9770, (accessed on 18 May 2008).

Brodsky, Joseph. ‘A writer is a lonely traveller, and no one is his helper’, New York

Times Magazine, 8:5, (October 1, 1972), p. 1-2.

Brodskii, Iosif. Chast' Rechi; Izbrannye Stikhi, 1962-1989. [Part of Speech; Selected

Poems, 1962-1989] (Moskva: "Khudozh.lit-ra", 1990).

Brodskii, Iosif. Stikhotvorenia. Poemy. [Short Poems. Long Poems.] (Moskva: Slovo,

2001).

Brodskii, Iosif. Sochineniia Iosifa Brodskogo. [Works by Iosif Brodskii] G. F.

Komarov (ed.). Vol. I-VII. (Sankt-Peterburg: Pushkinskii Fond, 2000; 1992).

Brodsky, Joseph. A Part of Speech. (London-New York: Oxford University Press,

1997).

Brodsky, Joseph. Collected poems in English, 1972-1996; Ann Kjellberg (ed.), (New

York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 2000).

Brodsky, Joseph. Joseph Brodsky: Conversations. Cynthia Haven (ed.), (Jackson:

University Press of Mississippi, 2002).

Brodsky, Joseph. Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems. (London: Penguin Books, 1973).

Brodsky, Joseph. Less Than One: essays. (London: Penguin, 1986).

Brodsky, Joseph. On Grief and Reason: essays. (New York: Farrar, Straus And

Giroux: 1996).

Brodsky, Joseph. So Forth, (New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux: 1996), dust-jacket.

Brodsky, Joseph, V ozhidanii varvarov: Mirovaya poeziya v perevodakh Iosifa

Brodskogo [Waiting for barbarians: world poetry in translations of Joseph Brodsky],

(St. Petersburg: Zhurnal Zvezda Magazine, 2001)

Brodsky, Joseph. Watermark. (London: Penguin Books, 1992).

238

Works by other authors:

Akhmatova, Anna. Poems of Akhmatova/ selected, translated and introduced by

Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward. (Boston-Toronto: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1973).

Anonymous (F.A. Vigdorova). ‘The Trial of Iosif Brodsky’, trans. Collyer Bowen ,

The New Leader, (August 31, 1964), pp 6-17.

Ansen, Alan. The table talk of W.H. Auden, ed. Nicholas Jenkins ; with an introduction

by Richard Howard. (London : Boston : Faber and Faber, 1991).

Arendt, Hannah. ‘Introduction’ to Walter Benjamin. Illuminations/essays and

reflections. H. Arendt (ed.), (New York: Schocken Books, 1969).

Arendt, Hannah. ‘Remembering Wystan H. Auden, Who Died in the Night of the

Twenty-Eighth of September’, (Auden, W.H. 1907-1973). The Harvard Advocate.

Vol. CVIII, Numbers 2 and 3. A special Auden double-number, (Cambridge (MA):

Harvard Advocate, [1975]).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957. (London: Faber&Faber,

1969).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. ‘An Unpublished Interview’ (1953) by Walter Kerr, The

Harvard Advocate (W.H. Auden 1907-1973 special issue, 1973) pp.31-32.

Auden, Wystan Hugh. ‘Foreword’ to Andrei Voznesenky. Antiworlds: bilingual

edition of verse. (New York: Bacic Books, INC., 1967) pp. iv-vi.

Auden, Wystan Hugh. ‘Foreword’ to Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems, trans. George

L. Kline (London: Penguin Books, 1973).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. ‘Introduction’ to ‘Slick but Not Streamlined, by John

Betjeman,’ in The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Vol. II (New Jersey:

Princeton University Press, 2002) pp. 302-303.

239

Auden, Wystan Hugh. ‘Making, Knowing and Judging’, The Dyer’s Hand and other

essays. (London: Faber&Faber, 1963).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. ‘Note’ to W.H. Auden reading his poetry. [Nonmusic sound

recording] (London: Harper Collins Audio Publishers, 1955).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. A Certain World. (London: Faber&Faber, 1970).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. Collected Poems. Ed. Mendelson (London: Faber&Faber,

1976).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. Foreword to W.S. Merwin. A Mask For Janus. (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 1952).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. Forewords & Afterwords (New York: Random House,

1973).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Prose, Vol. II, (New

Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2002).

Auden, Wystan Hugh. The Dyer’s Hand and other essays. (London: Faber&Faber,

1962).

Azadowski, Konstantin (Hrg.) Rilke und Rußland: Briefe, Erinnerungen, Gedichte.

(Berlin und Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1986).

Bachis, Maria Luisa. Walter Benjamin: linguaggio, traduzione, tradizione. (Firenze:

Atheneum, 2000).

Baranczak, Stanislaw. ‘Perevodia Brodskogo’ [Translating Brodsky] in Loseff, Lev

(ed.). Poetika Brodskogo:sbornik statei [The poetics of Brodsky: collection of essays]

(Tenafly, N.J.: Hermitage, 1986).

Bayley, John. ‚Sophisticated Razzmatazz’, Parnassus: Poetry Review, Part 9

(Spring/Summer 1981), pp. 83-90.

Bayley, John. ‚The Brodsky Paradox’, Los Angeles Times (29 October 2000) pp. 4-5.

240

Belyi, Andrei. Simvolizm [Symbolism] (Moskva: Knigoizdatelstvo “Musaget”, 1910).

Benedict, Helen. „Flight from predictability: Joseph Brodsky“, The Antioch Review,

3:1 (Winter 1985), pp. 9-22.

Benjamin, Walter. ‚Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers’, Gesammelte Scriften, IV/ i,

Herausg. Tillman Rexroth (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981) pp. 9-21.

Benjamin, Walter. Sprache und Geschichte: philosophische Essays. Rolf Tiedemann

(ed.), (Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam, 1992).

Birkerts, Sven. ‘The Art of Poetry XXVIII: Joseph Brodsky: Interview’, Paris Review

24, (Spring 1982) pp. 82-126.

Booth, Andrew Donald (ed.). Aspects of translation. (London: Secker and Warburg,

1958).

Brik, Osip Maksimovic, Two Essays on Poetic Language (Michigan: Ann Arbor,

1964).

Brown, Clarence. „The Best Russian Poetry Written Today“, New York Times’ Book

Review, 12:1 (9 September 1980) p. 11.

Brown, Clarence. Introduction to Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems, trans. Merwin

(New York: Atheneum, 1974).

Buch, Hans Christoph. ‘Nachmittag eines Nobelpreisträgers: Begegnung mit Joseph

Brodsky’, Übung mit Meistern. (Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag, 1996) pp. 87-94.

Carpenter, Humphrey. W. H. Auden: A biography. (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981).

Chukovsky, Kornei I. Iskusstvo perevoda [Art of translation] (Moskva-Leningrad:

Academia, 1936).

Chukovsky, Kornei I., Perevody Prosaicheskie [Prosaic Translations] (Petrograd:

“Vsemirnaia literatura”, 1919).

241

Corn, Alfred. The Poem’s Heartbeat: a manual of prosody. (New York: Story Line

Press, 1997).

Daniel Weissbort. ‚Something like his own language’ (review). (March 2003) URL

http://www.nd.edu/~ndr/issues/ndr14/reviews/weissbort.html (accessed 18 Jun. 07).

Dante Allighieri. ‚Il Convivio’, Le Opere di Dante. (Firenze: Nella Sede Della

Società, 1960).

Davie, Donald. ‘The saturated line: review To Urania’, Times Literary Supplement

(23-29 December 1988), pp. 14-15.

Derzhavin Gavriil R., Stikhotvoreniya (Poems). (Moskva, Leningrad: Sovetskiy

Pistatel, 1963).

Doolittle, Hilda (H.D.), H.D., ‘Introductory Note’, Hayyim Nahman Bialik. Knight of

Onions and Knight of Garlic, trans. Herbert Danby. (New York: Jordan Publishing

Company, 1939) p. 3-4.

Drabble, Margaret. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. (New York: Oxford

University Press, 2000).

Eliot, Thomas Stearns, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry/ Ronald Schuchard (ed.)

(London: Faber & Faber, 1993).

Etkind, Efim G. Brodski ou le procès d'un poète, Efim·Etkind (ed.), (Paris: Libr.

Générale Française, 1988).

Etkind, Efim. Poezia i Perevod [Poetry and Translation] (Leningrad: Sovetskii Pisatel,

1963).

Etkind, Efim. Proza o stikhakh [Prose on poetry] (St. Petersburg: “Znanie”, 2001).

Etkind, Efim. Russkie poety-perevodchiki ot Trediakovskogo do Pushkina. [Russian

poets-translators from Trediakovsky to Pushkin], (Leningrad: Izdatelstvo “Nauka”,

1973).

242

Frost, Robert. ‘Conversation on the Craft of Poetry’ in Robert Frost. Collected Poems,

Prose & Plays (New York: The Library of America). pp. 853-859.

Galatskaia, Natal’ia. ‘Nochnoi polet’, In Scando-Slavica (Tomus 36, 1990) pp. 84-85.

Gardner, Helen. The Metaphysical Poets, ed. Helen Gardner. (London: Penguin,

1985).

Gasparov, Mikhail L. “Briusov i bukvalizm”, Poetika perevoda [Poetics of

translation], (essays), (Moskva: Raduga, 1988), pp. 29-62.

Gasparov, Mikhail L. Izbrannye stat’i (Selected essays), (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe

obozrenie, 1995).

Gasparov, Mikhail L. Ocherk istorii russkogo stikha [A historic outline of Russian

verse] (Moskva: Izdatelstvo ‘Nauka’, 1984).

Gasparov, Mikhail L. Russky Stikh nachala XX veka v kommentariyakh [Russian Poem

of the beginning of the XX century in commentaries] (Moskva: “Fortuna Limited”,

2001).

Gordin, Iakov. ‘Nashe delo – pochti antropologicheskoe’ [Our task is almost

anthropological], ‘Introductory Note’ to Iosif Brodskii, V ozhidanii varvarov:

Mirovaia poeziia v perevodakh Iosifa Brodskogo [Waiting for the Barbarians: World

Poetry in Joseph Brodsky’s translations], (St. Petersburg: Zhurnal Zvezda, 2001), pp.

5-8.

Graziadei, Caterina. Il gladiatore morente: saggi di poesia russa [The dying gladiator:

essays on Russian poetry] (Firenze: Cadmo, 2000).

Grierson, Sir Herbert. Metaphysical Lyrics and Poems of the Seventeenth Century

(Oxford: The Claredon Press, 1959).

Gukovskii, Grigorii, „K voprosu o russkom classitsisme“ (On the subject of Russian

classicism), Rannie raboty po istorii russkoi poezii XVIII veka (Early works on the

243

history of the XVIII c. Russian poetry. ed. V.M. Zhivov (Moskva: „Iazyki russkoi

kul’tury“, 2001), pp. 254-311.

Gumilev, Nikolai. ‚Perevody stikhotvornye’ [Poetic translations], Printsypi

khudozhestvennogo perevoda [Principles of artistic translation] (Petersburg:

‘Vsemirnaya Literatura’, 1919) pp. 25-30.

Heaney, Seamus. ‘Brodsky’s Nobel: What the Applause Was All About’, New York

Times Review (8 November 1987) p. 18.

Hecht, Anthony. ‚Introduction’ to Joseph Brodsky. A Part of Speech. (London-New

York: Oxford University Press, 1997) pp. ix-xi.

Hecht, Anthony. Correspondence with Nancy Meiselas (1977-1978), ‘Brodsky

General,’ FSG archives, Manuscript Division, New York Public Library, Box 41.

Hecht, Anthony. The Hidden Law: the poetry of W.H. Auden (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1993).

Hofmann, Michael, ‘On absenting oneself: review’, Times Literary Supplement ,

London (10 January 1997) pp. 6-8.

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), The Odes of Horace, trans. David Ferry (New

York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1997).

Huyssen, Andreas Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung;

Studien zur frühromanischen Utopie e. deutschen Weltliteratur, Ausgabe: [Teildr.]

(http://stabikat.sbb.spk-

berlin.de/DB=1/SET=1/TTL=1/MAT=/NOMAT=T/CLK?IKT=1008&TRM=%3C&c

vtourl%3ESchlieren: Maier, 1969).

Huyssen, Andreas. Die frühromantische Konzeption von Übersetzung und Aneignung;

Studien zur frühromanischen Utopie e. deutschen Weltliteratur, (Zürich: Atlantis

Verlag, 1969).

244

Ivanov, Vyacheslav. ‘O yazykovykh prichinakh trudnostey perevoda

khudozhestvennogo teksta’ [On the linguistic reasons causing difficulties for the

translation of poetic texts], Poetika Perevoda: sbornik statei [Poetics of Translation:

Collection of Essays]. Ed. Goncharenko Sergey Filippovich. (Moskva: Raduga, 1988).

Ivask, Iuri. ‘Mandelstam po-angliiski i po-brodski’ [Mandelstam in English and in

Brodskian], Russkaya mysl’ (25 April 1974), p. 9.

Jacobs, Carol. ‘The Monstrosity of Translation’, MLN, Vol. 90, No. 6, Comparative

Literature: Translation: Theory and Practice, (Dec., 1975), pp. 755-766.

Jakobson, Roman. ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, in On Translation, (ed.)

Reuben Brower (Camridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1959) pp. 232-

239.

Jakobson, Roman. ‘Postscript’, Osip M. Brik, Two Essays on Poetic Language

(Michigan: Ann Arbor, 1964) pp. 77-81.

Jakobson, Roman. N.S. Trubetzkoy’s Letters And Notes. (Hague: Mouton, 1975).

Karlinsky, Simon (ed.). ‘Introduction,’ Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-

Wilson Letters, 1940-1970 (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004).

Kholshevnikov, Vladislav E. (ed.) Mysl’, vooruzhennaya rifmami: poeticheskaya

antologiya po istorii russkogo stikha [A thought armed with rhymes: poetic antology

on the history of Russian verse] (Leningrad: Izdatelstvo Leningradskogo Universiteta,

1984).

Kholshevnikov, Vladislav E. (ed.) Teoria Stikha [Verse theory] (Leningrad: Nauka,

1968).

Kholshevnikov, Vladislav E. Osnovy stikhovedeniia: russkoye stikholozhenie

[Foundations of prosody: Russian versification] (St. Petersburg: Sankt Peterburgskii

Universitet, 1996).

245

Kjellberg, Ann. ‘Editor’s Note’ in Joseph Brodsky, So Forth (New York: Farrar,

Straus And Giroux: 1996) pp. xiii-xiv.

Kjellberg, Ann. ‘Letter to translators’ (undated, 1990’s), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke,

Box 28 Fld 32.

Kline, George L. ‘Note on the Translation’ in Joseph Brodsky, Joseph Brodsky:

Selected Poems. (London: Penguin Books, 1973)

Kline, George L., ‘A History of Brodsky’s Ostanovka v pustyne and his Selected

Poems.’, Modern Poetry in Translation, 10 (Winter 1996) pp. 8-19.

Kline, George L., ‘Translating Brodsky’, Bryn Mawr Now, (Spring 1974) p. 33.

Kline, George L., ‘Working With Brodsky’, The Paintbrush, 4:7/8 (Spring & Autumn

1977). pp. 25-27.

Kline, George L., ‘Revising Brodsky’ in Weissbort, Daniel (ed.), Translating Poetry:

The Double Labyrinth. [Collection of Essays on Translation]. (London: Macmillan,

1989), pp. 95-106.

Kraus, Karl. Poesiealbum 78: Karl Kraus (Berlin: Neues Leben Verlag, 1974).

Kunitz, Stanley. ‘A Note on the Translations’, Anna Akhmatova. Poems of

Akhmatova/ selected, translated and introduced by Stanley Kunitz with Max Hayward.

(Boston-Toronto: Atlantic-Little, Brown, 1973) pp. 29-33.

Levertov, Denise. “Letter to the Editors”, The American Poetry Review, 2:2, (Mar/Apr

1973) p. 22.

Loseff, Lev (ed.). Poetika Brodskogo:sbornik statei [The poetics of Brodsky:

collection of essays] (Tenafly, N.J.: Hermitage, 1986).

Loseff, Lev and Polukhina, Valentina (eds.). Kak rabotayet stikhotvoreniye Brodskogo

[How works a poem by Brodsky] (Moskva: Novoye literaturnoye obozreniye, 2002).

246

Loseff, Lev and Polukhina, Valentina. Joseph Brodsky: The Art of a Poem. (New

York: Palgrave, 1999).

Losev, Lev. Iosif Brodskii: opyt literaturnoi biografii [Joseph Brodsky: an experiment

in literary biography] (Moskva: Molodaya Gvardiya, 2006).

Lotman, Iuri. O poetakh i poezii: analiz poeticheskogo teksta, stat’i i issledovaniya,

zametki, retsenzii, vystupleniya. [On poets and poetry: analysis of poetical text, essays

and researches, articles, reviews, lectures] (St. Petersburg: Iskusstvo-SPB, 1996).

Lotman, Iuri. Struktura khudozhestvennogo teksta [Structure of an artistic text]

(Moskva: Izdatelstvo “Iskusstvo”, 1970).

Lotman, Jurij M. Die Analyse des poetischen Textes. (Kronberg/ Ts.: Scriptor Verl.,

1975).

Mackinnon, Lachlan. “A break from dullness: The virtues of Brodsky’s

English verse”. TLS, (22 June 2001) pp. 9–11.

Malof, Joseph. A Manual of English Meters. (Bloomington-London: Indiana

University Press, 1970).

Mandelstam, Osip. ‘Conversation about Dante’, The complete critical prose and

letters. (Ann Arbor: Michigan, 1979).

Mandelstam, Osip. Complete Poetry of Osip Emilevich Mandelstam trans. Burton

Raffel, intro. Sidney Monas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1973).

Mandelstam, Osip. Osip Mandelstam: Selected Poems trans. W.S. Merwin and

Clarence Brown (New York: Atheneum, 1974).

Mandelstam, Osip. „Razgovor o Dante“ [Discorse on Dante] Sochinenia v dvukh

tomakh [Works in two volumes] Vol. 2, (prose). (Tula: «Filin», 1994).

Mayor, Joseph B. Modern English Metre. (Cambrige, England, 1901).

Mendelson, Edward. Later Auden. (London: Faber & Faber, 1999).

247

Menninghaus, Winfried. Walter Benjamins Theorie der Sprachmagie. (Frankfurt am

Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980).

Merwin, William Stanley. A Mask For Janus. (New Haven: Yale University Press,

1952).

Milosz, Czeslaw. “A Struggle Against Suffocation: review of A Part of Speech by

Joseph Brodsky”, The New York Review of Books, 27: 13, (August 14, 1980) pp. 4-12.

Milosz, Czeslaw. Czeslaw Milosz: Conversations. Ed. Cynthia L. Haven, (Jackson:

University Press of Mississippi, 2006).

Morrison, Blake, ‘The Muse and Mortals’, The Independent on Sunday (24 November

1996) pp. 34-35.

Moss, Howard. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1982), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke Rare

Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Fld. 38.

Nabokov, Vladimir. ‘Problems of Translation: Onegin in English,’ Partisan Review

XXII (1955), pp. 496-512.

Nabokov, Vladimir. Notes on Prosody. (New York: Bollingen Series, 1964).

Nabokov, Vladimir. Poems and Problems (Townbridge, Wiltshire: Redwood, 1972).

Newman, Michael. ‘The Art of Poetry Nr.17: Interview with Auden’ (1972), The

Paris Review, Issue 57, Spring 1974: URL

http://www.theparisreview.com/viewinterview.php/prmMID/3970, last accessed on 27

June 08.

Parini, Jay. About W.S. Merwin. Internet series Modern American Poetry: URL

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/m_r/merwin/life.html (accessed 03.10.05)

Polukhina, Valentina. ‘Angliiskii Brodskii’ [English Brodsky], Iosif Brodskii:

Tvorchestvo, lichnost’, sud’ba. Itogi trekh konferentsii. [Joseph Brodsky: art, persona,

248

life. Summary of three conferences] (St. Petersburg: Zhurnal ‘Zvezda’, 1998) pp. 49-

59.

Polukhina, Valentina. Iosif Brodksii glazami sovremennikov [Brodsky through the

eyes of his contemporaries] (St. Petersburg: Zhurnal ‘Zvezda’, 1997).

Polukhina, Valentina. Unpublished interview with Alan Myers September 2003 –

November 2004.

Porter, Peter. ‚Satire with a Heart’, The Observer (14 December 1980), p. 28.

Potebnia, Aleksandr A. Teoreticheskaya poetika [Theorical poetics] (Moskva:

Vysshaya shkola, 1990).

Praz, Mario. John Donne. (Torino: Edizioni S.A.I.E., 1958).

Pushkin, Aleksandr. Eugene Onegin/ Trans. Vladimir Nabokov. Vol. 1 (New York:

Bollingen Series, 1964).

Raine, Graig. ‘A reputation subject to inflation’, Financial Times, (16-17 November

1996), p. xix.

Rathe, Armin. Zum Vers-, Strophen- und Gedichtbau im Werk von W.H. Auden

(Bamberg: Schmacht, 1969).

Reid, Christopher. ‘Great American Disaster’, London Review of Books, (8 December

1988) pp. 17-18.

Rudnev, Petr A. Vvedenie v nauku o russkom stikhe. [Introduction to Russian verse

studies] (Tartu: Izd. Tartusskogo universiteta, 1989).

Rulyova, Natalia E. ‘Joseph Brodsky: Translating Oneself’: PhD dissertation.

(University of Cambridge, June 2002).

Saintsbury, George. A History of English Prosody: from the twelfth century to the

present day. (New York: Russell & Russell, [1911], 1963).

249

Saintsbury, George. Historical Manual of English Prosody. (London: Macmillan &

Co. Ltd., 1930).

Scherr, Barry P. ‘Strofika Brodskogo: novyi vzglyad’ [Brodsky’s stanzaic design: new

assessment] in Loseff, Lev and Polukhina, Valentina (eds.). Kak rabotayet

stikhotvoreniye Brodskogo [How works a poem by Brodsky] (Moskva: Novoye

literaturnoye obozreniye, 2002) pp. 267-299.

Scherr, Barry P. ‘To Urania’ in Lev Loseff and Valentina Polukhina, Joseph Brodsky:

The Art of a Poem (New York: Palgrave, 1999), pp. 89-115.

Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst. "Uber die verschiedenen Methoden des

Ubersetzens," (1813), Akademievorträge. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. ed. M. Rössler,

Erste Abt. Schriften und Entwürfe, Band 11 (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter,

2002), pp. 67-93.

Schmidt, Michael. 'Time of Cold: A Review of A Part of Speech’, New Statesman, (17

October 1980) pp. 24-25.

Schmidt, Paul. ‘Tongue-Tied’. The New York Review of Books, 21: 8 (May 16, 1974)

p. 10.

Scholem, Gerschom. Walter Benjamin: Geschichte einer Freundschaft. (Frankfurt am

Main: Suhrkamp, 1975).

Shengeli, Georgi A. Tekhnika stikha [Verse technique] (Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe

Izdatelstvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1960).

Shtokmar, Mikhail P. Issledovaniya v oblasti russkogo narodnogo stikhoslozheniya

[Researches in the field of Russian folk versification] (Moskva: Izdatelstvo Akademii

Nauk SSSR, 1952).

Silbajoris, Rimvydas. Russian versification (New York: Columbia University Press,

1968).

250

Silman, Tamara. Zametki o lirike [Notes on poetry] (Leningrad: “Sovetskii pisatel”,

1977).

Sontag, Susan. ‘Joseph Brodsky’ in Where the Stress Falls: essays. (New York:

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001) pp. 330-333.

Spender, Stephen. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1972-1984), Brodsky Papers, Beinecke, Rare

Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Folder 18.

Spender, Stephen. “Bread of Affliction: review of Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems”,

New Statesman (December 14, 1973) p. 11.

Spender, Stephen. Journals 1939-1983. (London-Boston: Faber&Faber, 1985).

Strand, Mark and Eavan Boland. The making of a poem (New York, London: W.W.

Norton & Co., 2000).

Strand, Mark. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1978-1995), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke

Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Fld.4.

Strand, Mark. The weather of words: poetic invention. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,

2000).

Sumerkin, Alexander (ed.). Portfel’: literaturnyi sbornik [Briefcase: literary

collection] (Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ardis Publishers, 1996).

Sumerkin, Alexander. “O skorbi i razume” [‘On grief and reason’] (the unpublished

version of Joseph Brodsky’s obituary), February 1996.

Tarlinkaja, Marina. English verse: theory and history. (Hague: Mouton, 1976).

Tarlinskaia, Marina. Stict Stress-Meter: strict stress-meter in English poetry compared

with German and Russian. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1993).

Tomashevskii, Boris. ‘Iazyk i stil: stenogramma publichnoi lektsii’ [Language and

style: transcription of a public lecture] (Leningrad: Vsesoiuznoe Obshchestvo Po

Rasprostraneniyu Politicheskikh i Nauchnykh Znanii, 1952).

251

Tomashevsky, Boris. O stikhe. [About verse] (Leningrad: Academia, 1929).

Tomashevsky, Boris. Russkoye stikhoslozhenie: Metrika. [Russian versification:

metrics] (Petrograd: Academia, 1923).

Vatsuro, V. E. Zapiski kommentatora [Commentator’s notes] (Sankt-Peterburg:

‘Akademicheskii proekt’, 1994),

Venclova, Thomas. Stat’i o Brodskom [Essays on Brodsky]. (Moscow: Baltrus/

Novoje Izdatel’stvo, 2005).

Viereck, Peter. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1973-1994), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke

Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Fld. 9.

Volgina, Arina. ‘Iosif Brodskii and Joseph Brodsky’, Russian Studies in Literature: A

Journal of Translations, 42:3 (Summer 2006), pp. 7-20.

Volkov, Solomon. Conversations with Joseph Brodsky. (New York: The Free Press,

1998).

Volkov, Solomon. Dialogi s Iosifom Brodskim [Conversations with Joseph Brodsky].

(Moskva: Izd. “Nezavisimaya Gazeta”, 1998).

Wachtel, Michael. The Development of Russian Verse : Meter and its Meanings.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1998).

Walcott, Derek. ‘Italian Eclogue: to Joseph Brodsky’ in The New York Review of

Books, 23: 13 (8 August 1996), p. 18.

Walcott, Derek. ‘Magic Industry’ [Review of To Urania by Joseph Brodsky]. The New

York Review of Books.35:18 (November 24, 1988) pp. 1-12.

Walcott, Derek. ‘Unpublished draft of the essay ‘Magic Industry’’, Brodsky Papers,

Beinecke, Box 53 Fld 12.

252

Weidmann, Heiner. „Wie Abgrunds Licht den Stürzenden beglücket“/ Zur Benjamins

Baudelaire-Übersetzung, Christiaan L. Hart Nibbrig (Ed.), Übersetzen: Walter

Benjamin. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001) pp. 311-328.

Weissbort, Daniel (ed.), Translating Poetry: The Double Labyrinth. (London:

Macmillan, 1989).

Weissbort, Daniel. ‘Battle Over Translation’ [In response to ‘Poet of Sacrifice’ by

David McDuff (April 15, 1982)], The New York Review of Books, 29:14 (September

23, 1982) pp. 11-14.

Weissbort, Daniel. From Russian with Love: Joseph Brodsky in English. (London:

Anvil Press Poetry, 2004).

Wilbur, Richard. ‘Letters to Brodsky,’ (1977-1984), Joseph Brodsky Papers, Beinecke

Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale, Uncat MSS 649, Box 19 Fld. 8.

Yeats, William Butler. The Variorum Edition of the Poems of W.B. Yeats/ Peter Allt

(ed.) (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957).

Zapadov, Vladimir A. Russkaya literature XVIII veka, 1700-1775 [XVIII century

Russian literature] (Moskva: “Prosveshcheniye”, 1979).

Zhirmunsky, Viktor. Teoria literatury, poetika, stilistika: izbrannye trudy [The theory

of literature, poetics, stylistics: selected works] (Leningrad: “Nauka”, 1977).

Zhirmunsky, Viktor. Teoria Stikha [Verse Theory]. (Leningrad: Sovetsky Pisatel’,

1975).

Zhirmunsky, Viktor. Vvedenie v metriku. Teoria stikha. [Introduction to metrics. Verse

theory] (Leningrad: Academia, 1925).

Zirmunskij, Viktor. Introduction to Metrics. The Theory of Verse. transl. C.F. Brown.

(The Hague: Mouton&Co., 1966).

253

Appendix

Deutsche Zusammenfassung

In der vorliegenden Dissertation untersuche ich Brodskys Übersetzungsmethoden und

verfolge dabei das Ziel, ihnen sowohl einen Platz innerhalb der englischen Literatur als auch

auf dem Gebiet der Übersetzung von Poesie ins Englische zuzuweisen.

Weil Brodskys Eigenübersetzungen bis jetzt insgesamt sehr wenig erforscht wurden,

und aufgrund der vorherrschenden Tendenz, die sich seit Brodskys frühem Tod 1996 schon

über ein Jahrzehnt lang in den wenigen Artikeln und Aufsätzen zu dem Thema zeigt, bloße

Meinungen zum Besten zu geben, hielt ich einen Umschwung in der kritischen

Auseinandersetzung mit Brodskys Eigenübersetzungen für angebracht.

Ich unterziehe zum ersten Mal in der Geschichte dieses Fachgebietes einige dieser

Übersetzungen einer detaillierten Textanalyse mit dem Ziel, anhand konkreter Beispiele eine

Theorie von Brodskys Übersetzungsverfahren aufzustellen und ihnen einen angemessenen

Platz in der englischen Übersetzung von Poesie zuzuweisen.

Meine Arbeit wurden durch die Tatsache erleichtert und bereichert, dass ich mich

2005 zu Studienzwecken in Yale aufhielt, als die Materialien des Brodsky-Nachlasses in

der dortigen Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library Forschern zugänglich gemacht

wurden.

Angesichts Brodskys Betonung der Form in der Übersetzung von Dichtung schien mir

eine gut fundierte Theorie des Verses für meine Forschungsarbeit unverzichtbar.

Da die Idee einer nachahmenden Übersetzung in englischen Literaturkreisen seit

langem als überholt galt, führte mich die Wahl eines Theoretikers selbstverständlich

zurück nach Russland.

Dort gediehen, zum Teil wegen der verschiedenen Entwicklung in der russischen

Dichtkunst, im zwanzigsten Jahrhundert die metrischen Studien des Formalismus.

Victor Zhirmunskys „Teoria Sticha“ (Theorie des Verses) schien mir wegen seiner

komparatistischen Eigenschaft der geeignete theoretische Hintergrund zu sein, sowohl

hinsichtlich einer metrischen Theorie als auch hinsichtlich einer Theorie formaler

Übersetzung von Poesie.

254

Indem ich meine ausführliche Analyse auf bisher unentdecktes Übersetzungsmaterial

begründe, zeige ich, dass die Einführung von 'un-englischen' Elementen nicht, wie bisher von

seinen Kritikern behauptet, die einzige Folge davon ist, dass Brodsky die von Ko-Übersetzern

vorgenommenen Übersetzungen seiner Gedichte überarbeitet hat.

Ich zeige, dass Brodskys Eigenübersetzungen weit davon entfernt sind, misslungen zu

sein, obwohl Brodskys Übersetzungspraxis auf kompositorischen Prinzipien basiert, die im

Kontext der englischen Poetik teilweise fremd erscheinen – Brodsky führte in seinen

Eigenübersetzungen Elemente russischer Rhythmik und weibliche Reime ein, was mit

ernster englischer Poesie beinahe unvereinbar ist.

Aufgrund der Tatsache, dass Brodsky in seinen Übersetzungen Assonanzen und

Alliterationen zustande bringt, die im Englischen aus eigenem Recht funktionieren, und durch

seine Wiederentdeckung von Metaphern, Vergleichen und Wortspielen fallen seine

Eigenübersetzungen in die Kategorie authentischer und eigenständiger Texte englischer

Dichtkunst. Form und Inhalt sind bei ihnen so unzertrennbar miteinander verbunden wie in

seinen russischen Originalen. Die Reime, die Brodsky in seinen Eigenübersetzungen

präsentiert, tragen ebenfalls dazu bei. Diese Reime, die erwiesenermaßen die

Hauptmechanismen seiner Verskompositionen sind, sind oftmals genauer als die von seinen

Ko-Übersetzern vorgeschlagenen, weisen ‚metaphysical wit’ auf und funktionieren als

eigenständige Wortspiele im Englischen.

Wie ich auf der Basis sorgfältiger Textanalysen verschiedener Übersetzungsversionen

zeige, hatte Brodskys Überarbeitung der Übersetzungen weiterhin zur Folge, dass sie den

Originalen hinsichtlich ihres Inhalts beträchtlich getreuer sind, indem sie Schattierungen von

Mehrdeutigkeit (metaphorisch und wörtlich), Abstufungen und Sprachregistern vermitteln

Überdies verfügt Brodsky als Autor und Übersetzer in einer Person über die

einzigartige Freiheit, Veränderungen an seinen ursprünglichen Metaphern, Vergleichen und

Wortspielen vorzunehmen.

All diese Merkmale der Brodsky'schen Beteiligung an seinen Übersetzungen trugen

dazu bei, dass sie im Englischen zu eigenständigen Kunstwerken wurden, ungeachtet einiger

innewohnenden fremdsprachlicher Eigenschaften.

Dieses Phänomen macht, wenn es nachgewiesen ist, eine Neubewertung hinsichtlich

seiner Position innerhalb der Nationalliteratur erforderlich.

255

Ich weise nach, dass Brodsky mit seinen Eigenübersetzungen eine größere Zielsetzung

verfolgte.

Brodskys besondere Haltung gegenüber der englischen Sprache gipfelte in seiner

Bestrebung, das noch vorhandene Potential formaler poetischer Muster, wie z. B. Metrum

und Reim aufzuzeigen.

Somit wählte Brodsky, statt zuzulassen, dass englische Muttersprachler sein Werk

in etwas übersetzten, was sich wie übertünchte englische Dichtung anhören würde, den

mühseligen Weg, sein Werk selbst zu übersetzen, wodurch er sich den strengen Angriffen

muttersprachlicher Kritiker aussetzte.

Documents

Joseph Brodsky translating Joseph Brodsky. Towards a New Theory